Types of Education and the Occupational Attainments of Young Men

Abstract

We examine the effects of high school curriculum and vocational training on occupational outcomes among young men 25-29 and 29-33 years of age. The effects on both occupational status and occupational routines (concern with people, data, and things) are reported. Returns to years of schooling tend to be greater for whites, but returns to curriculum and vocational training are generally greater for blacks. The major exceptions to stronger effects of vocational training for blacks involve skilled manual training and occupations dealing with things. The findings are interpreted as indicating that (a) the usual status attainment model has inadequately specified the relationship between educational and occupational attainment, (b) the common conclusion that black occupational outcomes are less predictable than those of whites is unwarranted, and (c) curriculuim and vocational training have such strong effects for blacks because they help move blacks into peopleand data-processing occupations. The great outpouring of publications dealing with the status attainment process which followed Blau and Duncan's innovative analysis has been primarily concerned with elaborating the conceptualization of the antecedent processes leading up to levels of educational attainment and the specification of patterns of attainment experienced by various subgroups of the population-male/female, black/white differences, etc. More recently, appraisals of this work have focused on either the structural constraints within which the processes occur (Beck et al.) or the fact that occupational outcomes have been defined too narrowly. Although the core of this body of research has used either a socioeconomic scale or a prestige scale of occupations, more recently attention has been given to other ways to conceptualize occupational outcomes (Mortimer; Wilson; Wright and Perrone). As a Partial support for this research was provided by the Biomedical Research Support Grant from Duke University. We are grateful to Richard T. Campbell for his advice and comments. ? 1982 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732/82/010024-45$02.20