Social Class Inequalities in Graduates’ Labour Market Outcomes: The Role of Spatial Job Opportunities

Abstract

This paper provides new important evidence on the spatial dimension of social class inequalities in graduates’ labour market outcomes, an aspect largely overlooked within the existing literature. Using data from the HESA Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Early and Longitudinal Survey (DLHE) for the 2008/09 graduate cohort and applying multilevel logistic regression models, we investigate whether and the extent to which social class inequalities in graduates’ occupational outcomes vary depending on the job opportunities in the geographical area where they find employment. By examining different macro-level indicators, we find wider social inequalities by parental social class in areas with fewer opportunities in high professional and managerial occupations and smaller inequalities in areas with more opportunities. Interestingly, this pattern applies only to graduates who moved away from their place of origin. We interpret this finding as the result of selective migration, that is, areas with more opportunities attract the better-qualified graduates irrespective of their social origin. Finally, graduates’ HE experiences—in particular, their field of study—and sector of employment explain most of the social class gap in areas with fewer job opportunities.

Identity economics and the disadvantage effect on graduate retention in cities: using regression to analyse the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and geography

“…Akerlof and Kranton (2000 p. 748) make the link between social group identity, disadvantage and behaviour explicit, saying 'The greater the extent of this social exclusion, the greater the possibility of equilibria in which individuals eschew remunerative activities' like, for example, employment migration. Previous analyses of HESA data consistently demonstrate that social exclusion and disadvantage are relevant to understanding patterns of graduate (non)migration in the UK, with nonmigration being associated with being female, from a minority background, lower socio-economic status, and graduating from a university not in the elite Russell Group (Duta & Iannelli, 2018;Faggian & McCann, 2008;Faggian et al, 2006;Kidd et al, 2017;Mosca & Wright, 2010). Additionally, findings from Faggian et al (2007b) show that female graduates are more likely to be non-migrants and males are more likely to stay on where they studied, patterns which are corroborated by the work of Finn and Holton (2019) who suggest that traditional gender norms still constrain the higher education migration of females in contemporary Britain.…”

Where DESO Disappears: Spatial Inequality and Social Stratification at Labour Market Entry

“…The more occupationally specific and coordinated nature of the German labour market also leaves less room for unanticipated downward mobility, of the sort believed to trigger concerted intervention by upper class families. But while the German labour market is often deemed to be more meritocratic once educational attainment has been accounted for (Duta and Iannelli 2018), the comparable country-level DESO estimates produced by Vandecasteele (2016) and Grätz and Pollak (2016) Strandh et al 2014). Second, the occupational status of the first job obtained by labour market entrants, since young people enter the labour market in a dizzying array of roles and occupations, jobs that yield different socio-economic returns in the short-term and different opportunities for career progression and status attainment over the life course (Blau and Duncan 1967;Merton 1968;Mayer and Carroll 1987;Scherer 2004).…”

An Empirical Study for European Countries: Factors Affecting Economic Growth and Self-Employment by Gender

“…The concern about high levels of school drop-out has been present in EU common policies [46,79,80]. However, that variable has habitually been addressed in studies relating to developing countries [49], while at the European level, the research topic has traditionally been focused on social inequalities of university graduates accessing the labor market [81]. As proposed in H6 from the present paper, this variable has been included in the study to discuss the relationship of the level of early school leaving within the youth population in Europe to entrepreneurship.…”