From the Cradle to the Grave: The Influence of Family Background on the Career Path of Italian Men

Abstract

Using a longitudinal data set that contains detailed information on working histories of Italian men, we investigate the relationship between parental background and sons’ earnings profiles. We find that the parental influence on sons’ earnings persists over the career and that the direct influence controlling for sons’ education is large and grows during the working career. After twenty years of experience, our baseline specification indicates that an additional year of parental education is associated with a 2.0% increase in sons’ wages, while an additional year of son's education is associated with a 4.8% increase. We use educational mobility between parents and sons to disentangle this influence into a glass ceiling effect – a premium for well‐off children who have high educational attainments – and a parachute effect – a premium for well‐off children who acquire less education than their parents. We find that both effects contribute to explain the steeper earnings profiles of the well‐off sons, consistently with the idea that family ties play a crucial allocative role in the Italian labour market.

Career expectations and the motivating factors for studying dentistry in Libya

“…Previous studies reported similar observations in Japan, Iran, and Germany [ 19 , 22 , 25 ]. These findings agree with studies showing the family’s influence on career choices [ 23 , 26 ] which may be expected since most students live with their families when deciding on their careers [ 27 ]. Increasing parental awareness and student career options may mitigate ill-informed decisions regarding choosing dentistry as a future career.…”

“…This may be because the students at that age are financially dependent on their families and most respondents were females for whom the financial motives may be of less concern in the Libyan society. In previous studies, women were more motivated by flexible working hours and altruism than men, indicating that financial freedom and self-employment were primary motives for studying dentistry [22][23][24]. In this study, males were more likely to be motivated by prestige and working in the healthcare field.…”

Identifying and Qualifying Deviant Cases in Clusters of Sequences: The Why and The How

“…We focus on the employment trajectories of Italian women who transitioned from school to work between late 1970s and early 1990s. Different cohorts were differently exposed to labour market deregulation, but the ‘access’ to a stable employment trajectory remained associated with individual characteristics and parental background (Raitano & Vona, 2018 ; Struffolino & Raitano, 2020 ). Besides the structural constraints discouraging women—and particularly mothers—from participating in the labour market (e.g., lack of accessible childcare, residual parental leave for fathers, persistent wage gaps), maternal employment has proved to be a driver of women’s employment and intergenerational mobility, over and above parental education.…”

Factors Influencing Career Choice Among Final Semester Undergraduate Students of a Business Management Faculty in A Malaysian Public University

“…Parents play a vital role in every aspect of their children's lives including their career choice (Michele & Francesco, 2018). Besides, Kumazhege (2017) also found there is a significant relationship between parents and career choices.…”