College as equalizer? Testing the selectivity hypothesis

Absolute income mobility obscures marginalized children's disadvantages

Intergenerational mobility captures the distance between the socioeconomic positions of parents versus their adult children. Researchers measure this distance in absolute and relative units, such as absolute dollars and relative ranks. Absolute and relative mobility often diverge. For example, absolute mobility can rise while relative mobility declines. How should scholars and policymakers understand this divergence? We conclude that they should understand it as follows: absolute mobility is less reflective than relative mobility of marginalized children's socioeconomic disadvantages. We base this conclusion on analyses of survey, administrative, and simulated data on income mobility in the contemporary United States. We analyze multiple points of difference in mobility, which facilitates the recognition of several asymmetries. First, high-income children's experiences weigh more heavily in absolute-mobility trends than low-income children's experiences, particularly when economic growth is positive. Second, this asymmetry is more characteristic of absolute- than relative-mobility trends. Third, absolute-mobility differences across demographic groups are more prone than relative-mobility differences to obscure marginalized groups' socioeconomic disadvantages. These asymmetries have policy implications: We caution that focusing on absolute mobility as a policy target can divert attention away from society's most disadvantaged children.

Economic returns to reproducing parents' field of study

Research on the influence of family background on college graduates' earnings has not considered the importance of the match between parents' and children's field of study. Using a novel design based on within-family comparisons, I examine long-term earnings returns to reproducing parents' field of study in Denmark. I find that individuals whose field of study matches that of a parent have earnings that are 2 percent higher than those of their siblings with college degrees in different fields, on average. Earnings returns to field inheritance are highest in the fields of law (9 percent), medicine (6 percent), and engineering (4 percent) and are driven mainly by income from self-employment. I find no direct evidence of nepotism as the earnings advantage does not arise from inheritance of parents' firms or employment in parents' occupational network. My findings indicate that, although a college degree generally equalizes family background differences in economic outcomes, there are additional payoffs to field inheritance, particularly in traditional fields characterized by a high degree of social closure and self-employment.

College as a Great Equalizer? Marriage and Assortative Mating Among First- and Continuing-Generation College Students

College has been hailed as a "great equalizer" that can substantially reduce the influence of parents' socioeconomic status on their children's subsequent life chances. Do the equalizing effects of college extend beyond the well-studied economic outcomes to other dimensions, in particular, marriage? When and whom one marries have important implications for economic and family stability, with marriage acting as a social safety net, encouraging joint long-term investments, and potentially producing dual-earner families. I focus on the marriage timing and assortative mating patterns of first- and continuing-generation college graduates to test whether college acts as an equalizer for marriage against alternative hypotheses. Using discrete-time event-history methods and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I find small differences between first- and continuing-generation graduates in marriage timing, but larger differences in assortative mating, particularly for women. First-generation women have a substantially lower likelihood of marrying another college graduate than do continuing-generation women, and a higher likelihood of marrying a noncollege graduate. These findings highlight the importance of examining noneconomic outcomes when studying social mobility and offer insight into how inequality may persist across generations, especially for women, despite apparent upward mobility.

Reconsidering the 'meritocratic power of a college degree'

Previous research has shown that the intergenerational transmission of advantage disappears once individuals obtain a bachelor's degree. This is known as the equalization thesis: the 'meritocratic power' of a college degree. This paper revisits the question of origin-destination association among college graduates. We improve on earlier studies by using three large sample (40,000+) of the National Survey of College Graduates, consisting of birth cohorts between 1938 and 1985. Contrary to the equalization thesis, we find that parental education and parental income are associated with substantially higher post-college incomes. An individual's own attainment only partially mediates the association through the type of college attended, but not through attaining an advanced degree. The consistency of the origin-destination estimates across three decades supports a reproduction thesis of mobility.

Observing the Unobservable: Migrant Selectivity and Agentic Individuality Among Higher Education Students in China and Europe

The research in migrant selectivity largely overlooks the broader institutional processes that shape the extent to which migrants from different backgrounds are indeed positively selected. This is particularly true in the case of highly skilled migrants, whose selection may not be conditioned by migration but by education. This paper deals with this limitation by studying individual characteristics, which are often treated as unobserved selectivity, among a specific flow of educational migrants in Europe, namely, Chinese higher education students. To do so, we use a unique representative multi-country dataset of about 8,000 Chinese international students and their native-born counterparts in China, the UK, and Germany. Our evidence rules out positive selection of migrants on individuality traits such as ambition, creativity, or being a risk-taker or independently minded. This supports our argument that the prevalence of agentic models of individuality is embedded in tertiary education on a global level.

Social origin, field of study and graduates' career progression: does social inequality vary across fields?

Research on stratification and mobility has consistently shown that in the UK there is a direct impact of social origin on occupational destination net of educational attainment even for degree-holders. However, only a few studies applied a longitudinal and dynamic perspective on how intergenerational mobility shapes graduates' working careers. Using multilevel growth curve modelling and data from the 1970 British cohort study (BCS70), we contribute to this research by looking at the emergence of social inequalities during the first ten years since labour market entry. We further distinguish between graduates of different fields of study as we expect social disparities to develop differently due to differences in initial occupational placement and upward mobility processes. We find that parental class does not affect occupational prestige over and above prior achievement. Separate analyses by the field of study show that initial differences in occupational prestige and career progression do not differ between graduates from different classes of origin in STEM fields, and arts and humanities. It is only in the social sciences that working-class graduates start with lower occupational prestige but soon catch up with their peers from higher classes. Overall, our results indicate no direct effect of social origin on occupational attainment for degree-holders once we broaden our focus to a dynamic life course perspective.