The direct effect of social origin on occupational destination in Europe

Valeria Breuker and Gabriele Ballarino

Stato e mercato, 2023, issue 2, 297-332

Abstract: Research on social stratification has extensively worked on the association between parental status and children’s occupational achievement (intergenerational mobility), as well as on the association between parental status and children’s educational achievement (inequality of educational opportunities). Less work has been devoted to the study of the direct effect of social origin on occupational outcomes (DESO), that is the association between family background and occupational attainment observed when education is controlled for.This work aims to analyse the direct effect of social origin in Europe, by pooling the two major European comparative datasets (EU-SILC and ESS) and by using two different measures of occupational achievement, namely social class and ISEI. It looks at the DESO in Europe as a whole and over countries, also considering its heterogeneity of this effect over educational levels and gender.Results show a significant direct effect of social origin on occupational destinations, controlling for education, both in Europe and over countries. We also found that the effect of social origin, be it unconditional or conditional on education, is lower for women. Moreover, when education is controlled for the coefficient decreases more for women than for men, and both gendered patterns were found to be stronger for income than for occupations. Finally, the heterogeneity of the direct effect of social origin by education follows a compensation pattern, so that it is higher for the less (meaning non-tertiary) educated. Country results do follow to some extent the typical socio-economic clusters found by comparative research on production regimes and welfare states, with a higher direct effect of social origin in former Communist and Mediterranean country.

Date: 2023
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