Why do social origins still matter? New mechanisms of privilege maintenance on the labour market

https://zoom.us/j/94304270200?pwd=VWRna2EyM2FPOWhNREl5c0cvSndxdz09

Why do the sons and daughters of a shop assistant still fail to achieve the same labor market outcomes as the sons and daughters of a doctor, even if they have the same level of education? Education is perceived as the main channel to achieve social mobility by equalizing the chances of individuals in society. However, there is still a close relationship between an individual’s social origins and their socioeconomic attainment and this relationship is maintained through various channels. A major critique of previous studies is that university education has not been measured adequately, and if the quality of higher education was measured properly, the effect of social origin would disappear. In this presentation, I address this shortcoming in measurement, and I present four mechanisms of how social advantage reproduces among highly educated individuals. I show that the effects of social origins persist and I consider why upper class graduates have better labor market outcomes than lower class graduates. In trying to understand how inequality is reproduced among university graduates, I investigate quality differences in higher education, elite higher education institutions, compensatory advantage, and internal migration.