Maintaining advantage : how social background matters for university graduates’ labour market outcomes

Abstract

Several studies have scrutinized the direct effect of social origin on the labour market outcomes of highly educated individuals. A major critique of these previous studies is that university education has not been measured adequately, and if the quality of higher education was measured properly, the effect of social origin would disappear. This thesis addresses this shortcoming in measurement, and investigates five mechanisms of how social advantage reproduces among highly educated individuals. I show that the effects of social origins persist and I consider why upper-class graduates have better labour market outcomes than lower-class graduates. In understanding how inequality is reproduced among university graduates, I investigate qualitative differences in higher education, internal migration, elite higher education institutions, compensatory advantage, and discrimination based on social class. The first chapter Does Social Origin Still Matter? The Effect of Social Origin on Graduates' Occupations in Italy, analyses the direct effect of social origins on the labour market by employing a detailed measure of education that accounts for the qualitative differences in higher education such as universities attended, fields of study and grades. The second chapter Privilege Travels: Migration and Labour Market Outcomes of Southern Italian Graduates assesses internal migration as an under-studied mechanism in the intergenerational reproduction of inequality literature. Chapter three Elites Remain Elites: Social Background in Elite Higher Education Institutions in France estimates the effect of attending elite universities on income, while holding constant the motivation of students to enroll in an elite institution and previous academic achievement and it also tests whether attending an elite institution provides a meritocratic labour market after graduation. The final chapter Social Media and Hiring: An Online Experiment on Discrimination based on Social Class tests discrimination based on social class in a potential hiring situation and two of the possible mechanisms behind it. Taken together, the resulting thesis offers theory and evidence to better understand the effects of social origins on the labour market among graduates, proposing five mechanisms of how intergenerational inequality is transmitted.