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

Adriana Duta,Cristina Iannelli

doi:10.3390/socsci7100201

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.

Highlights

Much of the policy debate in the last few decades in the UK has centred on the issues of reducing inequalities in education and promoting intergenerational social mobility (Cabinet Office 2011; Department for Education DFE)
To analyse whether the area of employment and its characteristics are associated with the chances of gaining a top-level job after graduation and avoiding low-level jobs, we estimated a series of hierarchical regression models which shows how much of the variance of our outcome is explained at the area level (Table 1)
The variance estimates are very small, they are relatively large compared to their standard errors, indicating that the social class of graduates varies across areas of employment

Summary

Introduction

Much of the policy debate in the last few decades in the UK has centred on the issues of reducing inequalities in education and promoting intergenerational social mobility (Cabinet Office 2011; Department for Education DFE). Scholars have manifested strong scepticism about the reliance solely on educational expansion and educational reforms to eradicate social class inequalities in the labour market. This is because possessing high levels of education in most cases is an essential requirement for social mobility to take place but it is not a sufficient condition to guarantee equal chances of accessing top-level jobs (Boliver 2017; Brown 2013; Iannelli and Paterson 2007). Various studies have consistently shown that tertiary graduates from more advantaged social classes have higher chances of entering top-level jobs compared to their counterparts from less advantaged social classes (Crawford et al 2016; Britton et al 2016; Jacob et al 2015)

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion