IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04126836.html

Can workers still climb the social ladder as middling jobs become scarce? Evidence from two British cohorts

Author

Listed:
  • Cecilia García-Peñalosa

    (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre de recherche de la Banque de France - Banque de France)

  • Fabien Petit

    (University of Sussex)

  • Tanguy van Ypersele

    (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The increase in employment polarization observed in several high-income economies has coincided with a reduction in inter-generational mobility. This paper argues that the disappearance of middling jobs can drive changes in mobility, notably by removing a stepping stone towards high-paying occupations for those from less well-off family backgrounds. Using data from two British cohorts who entered the labour market at two points in time with very different degrees of employment polarization, we examine how parental income affects both entry occupations and occupational upgrading over careers. We find that transitions across occupations are key to mobility and that the impact of parental income has grown over time. At regional level, using a shiftshare IV-strategy, we show that the impact of parental income has increased the most in regions experiencing the greatest increase in polarisation. This indicates that the disappearance of middling jobs played a role in the observed decline in mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Fabien Petit & Tanguy van Ypersele, 2023. "Can workers still climb the social ladder as middling jobs become scarce? Evidence from two British cohorts," Post-Print hal-04126836, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04126836
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2023.102390
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-04126836v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://amu.hal.science/hal-04126836v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2023.102390?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michele Cantarella & Ilja Kristian Kavonius, 2024. "Job polarisation and household borrowing," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 22(4), pages 959-980, December.
    2. Roupakias, Stelios, 2023. "Employment polarization: evidence from regions in Greece," MPRA Paper 118696, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Perelman, Sergio & Pestieau, Pierre & Racionero, Maria, 2023. "Social mobility, education and populism," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2023026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    4. Fabien Petit, 2023. "AI and Employment Opportunities: Fostering Skill Development for a Prosperous Future," CEPEO Briefing Note Series 27, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Dec 2023.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04126836. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.