The role of non-cognitive and cognitive skills in accounting for the intergenerational transmission of 'top job' status

Claire Tyler ()
Additional contact information
Claire Tyler: Institute of Education, University College London

No 16-03, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: Enabling fair access to professional careers is an important strand of UK social mobility policy, however many high status employers demand a wide range of 'soft skills' in addition to strong cognitive skills to identify the best talent which can disadvantage individuals from less privileged backgrounds. This paper uses BCS data to estimate and decompose the intergenerational persistence in top job status to assess the contribution of four potential transmission mechanisms for this advantage: non-cognitive skills, cognitive skills, job aspirations and educational attainment. The results reveal that individuals with parents employed in a top job are 22.8 percentage points more likely to access a top job in adulthood than individuals with parents who are employed in a non top job. Childhood cognitive skills and later educational attainment are found to be particularly important contributors to this transmission of advantage, with childhood non cognitive skills also making a substantial contribution.

Keywords: Intergenerational Occupational Mobility; Non cognitive Skills; Cognitive Skills; Professional Labour Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J24 J44 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.ucl.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp1603.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1603

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London Quantitative Social Science, Social Research Institute, 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NU. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Neus Bover Fonts ().