Education and the Intergenerational Transmission of Occupational Advantage

• In Event: 56.076 - High School and Beyond: Effects of Equality and Inequality of Educational Opportunity at Midlife

Abstract

Objectives
Over the past several years, both scholarly and popular attention has refocused on social mobility in the United States. Spurred on by a combination of massive increases in the availability of Big Data (particularly Chetty and colleagues success in linking IRS tax records; (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, & Turner, 2014)) and economic change, this attention has centered largely on the inheritance of earnings (Jerrim & Macmillan, 2015; Mazumder, 2005; Mitnik & Grusky, 2015) and to some degree on occupations (Beller, 2009; Long & Ferrie, 2013; Mandel, 2012; Mazumder & Acosta, 2015). Missing thus far from much of the discussion, however, is a careful analysis of the relationship between the nature of the work done by parents and children and of the role of education in attenuating and reinforcing the intergenerational flow of work experiences and opportunities. Given the substantial shifts in the occupational structure over the past generation, and the polarization of opportunities for autonomy, scheduling flexibility and deeper cognitive engagement with work, we argue that this component of the experience of intergenerational (im)mobility, and the degree to which that mobility is contingent upon educational attainment, is vital to understanding the experience of social class and opportunity in America today.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Several decades before the current revival of economic and sociological research on social stratification and personality (now often under the expansive umbrella of ‘noncognitive skills’), Melvin Kohn and his colleagues developed a line of inquiry linking social class of parents to their personalities, the socialization and personalities of their children, and their children’s eventual occupational attainment (Kohn, 1977; Kohn & Schooler, 1983). Kohn and colleagues argued that the kinds of work parents did were both shaped by and shaped their personality characteristics, contributing to differences in parenting styles and child socialization later elaborated by Lareau(Lareau, 2003).
Mortimer (Mortimer, 1974; Mortimer & Lorence, 1979) and Spenner (Spenner, 1981) elaborated on Kohn et al.’s insights to illuminate the ways on which occupational standing and occupational attributes of fathers were passed along to their sons. Whether through socialization, preferences or distinct sets of educational and occupational opportunities, these scholars showed that some occupational attributes, particularly those related to occupational autonomy and authority, seemed to pass from father to son. Hout (Hout, 1984) elaborated on this process, showing that patterns of occupational mobility and the role of education in those processes began to converge for African American and white mean between the early 1960s and late 1970s.
We build on this older scholarship to evaluate how parent and child occupational attributes are related across the child’s career. Taking advantage of recently collected data from High School and Beyond, as well as previously unreleased detailed parental occupation, we document the relationship between occupational skill demands and tasks experienced by parents and those experiences by their children. We show how these patterns vary be sex and by race/ethnicity, as well as how educational pathways (timing and level of educational attainment, field of study and prestige of undergraduate institution) contribute to these processes.

Author

• Eric Grodsky, University of Wisconsin