While a range of studies investigate how a child's background characteristics affects his or her placement risk, only few have considered the possible stratified influence of these characteristiscs. This study contributes to this small literature by investigating if the influence background characteristics varies by the child's social class membership. The analysis shows that this is the case: background characteristics matters less for preschool children from higher classes compared to low class preschool children, however, they matter more for high class teenagers than for low class teenagers.