In Ireland, as elsewhere, bullying has been firmly established as a significant issue for contemporary workplaces, and the public sector in particular where research suggests that workers are more likely to report bullying than in the private sector (Hoel & Cooper, 2000; Zapf et al. 2003; O’Connell & Williams, 2002; O’Connell et al., 2007). Bullying is often perceived as primarily an interpersonal conflict and not a ‘normal’ industrial relations issue. However, recent research problematises this assumption by increasingly highlighting the importance of job and organisational factors, such as job intensification and organisational change, on the likelihood of a person reporting bullying. In addition, a comprehensive understanding of bullying, like industrial injury, must arguably take account of its social production and broader institutional context (Nichols, 1997). This paper investigates along three main lines of enquiry in order to address this central research question: why are workers in the public sector more likely to report bullying than those in the private sector? First, research has increasingly found that bullying is more likely to be reported in organisations undergoing change (O’Moore et al., 1998; Hoel & Salin, 2003; O’Connell & Williams, 2002; Harvey et al., 2006). Research in Ireland attests to the greater perception of organisational change in the public sector, compared to the private sector (O’Connell et al., 2003) and this may be one possible explanation as to the higher reported levels of bullying in this sector. Second, the paper explores the importance of the institutional framework, for example, formal policies and procedures, in influencing the extent to which bullying is recognised as a legitimate grievance in the workplace (McCarthy & Mayhew, 2004). The public sector by virtue of its proximity to Government is likely to well-developed policies and greater sensitivity to bullying than the private sector. Research has shown that familiarity with legislation on workplace bullying and the likelihood of having both informal and formal policies is greater in the public sector (O’Connell et al., 2007). The present paper suggests that there are therefore important differences in how bullying is recognised as a legitimate type of workforce harassment in the public and private sector which may therefore effect reporting rates. Third, whether the expected differences in job mobility, and job security, in the public and private sector affect the reporting rates in these sectors. Researchers have suggested that it is the job characteristics within the public sector, for example, permanent contracts and longer tenure, which may explain the higher reported levels of bullying (Zapf et al., 2003). Public sector workers may be less likely than private sector workers to seek alternative employment elsewhere if they perceive inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. To explore why workers in the public sector are more likely to report bullying than in the private sector, I draw on a cross-sectional, nationally representative survey of workers in Ireland specifically addressing the issue of workplace bullying. In addition, I also draw on a nationally representative survey of Irish employers in both the public and private sector. Both surveys were conducted in 2007

In this paper we analyse the health effects of fixed-term contract status for men and women in West-Germany and Spain using panel data. This paper asks whether changes in the employment relationship, as a result of the liberalisation of employment law, have altered the positive health effects associated with employment (Goldsmith et al. 1996; Jahoda 1982). Using information on switches between unemployment and employment by contract type we analyze whether transitions to different contracts have different health effects. We find that unemployed workers show positive health effects at job acquisition, and also find the positive effect to be smaller for workers who obtain a fixed-term job. We also establish surprising differences by gender and country, with women less likely to report positive health effects at job acquisition. For West-Germany, this was found to be a function of the dual-burden of paid and unpaid care within the home.

This work analyzes the evolution of career mobility in Italy over the 20th century. First, we want to quantify the amount of career mobility and to identify the main flows between occupational classes across different birth cohorts. It is well-known that career mobility is generally low in Italy, but here we want to assess whether it is at least increasing over time. Our second research issue concerns the relationship between intra- and intergenerational mobility. We will assess whether the influence of family background and of educational qualifications on occupational attainment is confined to labor market entry or extends to work-life mobility. As mentioned above, it is well-documented that social origins display a marked influence on entry class and that this influence is largely, though not exclusively, mediated by educational attainment, but what happens to this initial allocation? Does it become more or less unequal over the life course with regard to the conditioning of social origins, and what is the role of education in this respect? In other words, our concern is whether individuals originating from the upper classes benefit from any additional advantage in the occupational attainment process other than that ensured by their parents at the beginning of their careers. Our third research question connects the previous two. In other words, the relationship between origins, education and career progression will be studied across different birth cohorts, in order to assess whether changing dynamics of career mobility contribute to a greater or lower social openness of the Italian society.

This paper explores to what extent changes in outcomes to tertiary compared to vocational training qualifications in Germany influence educational decisions of students that are eligible to enrol in tertiary education. The core hypothesis of the paper is that students from different social backgrounds should react differently to changes in returns on education. To this end, a unique dataset consisting of large scale surveys of university qualified students from the German Higher Education Information System Institute is used. The surveys were conducted at five different points in time between 1983 and 2004. All analyses are run separately for men and woman and average state unemployment and income ratios for tertiary degree holders and apprenticeship graduates for each survey year were matched to the micro data to assess the effect of changes in labour market outcomes on educational decisions. Contrary to many previous findings, the results of the paper suggest that variations in relative income ratios do not seem to affect educational decisions of school leavers while variation in unemployment seems to have significant effects on postsecondary decisions for women only. Furthermore, female students from lower class backgrounds seem to be more responsive to changes in unemployment ratios than their higher class peers.

An important cause of economic inequality in contemporary advanced societies is the variation in wages across occupations. We examine the extent to which this variation is captured by commonly used schemas of occupational rank, in particular social class (in its EGP or ESeC form) but also occupational prestige (in its SIOPS form). In addition, we ask what underlying positional factors determine the strong empirical relations between class, occupation and wages. Four such factors are distinguished on the basis of previous research: skill requirements, authority, autonomy and scarcity. The empirical results, based on data from eleven countries in the European Social Survey (ESS) 2004, show (a) that class explains a very large proportion of the occupational variation in wages, and (b) that skill requirements are much more important than other factors in accounting for the class-wage gradient. In fact, the empirical association between class, prestige and wages, on the one hand, and authority, autonomy and scarcity, on the other, is almost completely due to the variation in the skill content of work across occupations. These findings are highly similar in all countries examined. Existing theories should be accordingly revised.

Aims The death rate of medical doctors was one of the highest among the professions in England in the late 19th century, while the death rate of the clergy was the lowest. We here present relative death risks of clerics, doctors and other educational groups in Sweden today, and make a comparison to 19th-century England.
Methods Relative death risks from Cox regressions are reported for 12 occupational or educational groups in the ages 30-64.
Results Those with a theological exam show higher risks of dying during the follow-up period compared to others with a similar educational level. On the other hand, medical doctors have relatively low death risks, although professors in medicine deviate by having high risks. Professors in other subjects experience the lowest death risks of all identified groups.
Conclusions The death risk pattern among clerics and doctors seems to be reversed in present-day Sweden compared to England a hundred years ago. This may reflect changes in working conditions as well as the prestige of the occupations.
Keywords: Mortality, occupations, education, health inequality

The aim of the project is an empirical investigation regarding the determinants of fluctuations in the personnel structure of firms. For example, determinants could be the age distribution of firms or the institutional arrangement on the industry level as well as the size of a corporation or management policies on the firm level. The conceptual starting point is the idea of a (macro-institutionally modified) historical path-dependency of the development of personnel structures. This historical path-dependency on the organizational level may prevent corporations from adapting their personnel structure flexibly to the needs and expectations of their current environment. For example, they are restricted in their ability to adapt to ongoing demographic developments in the labor force. The empirical part of the project is based on data of German corporations and their employees, the linked-employer-employee-dataset of the “Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung” (IAB). Empirical indicators for fluctuations in the personnel structure of firms are job entries and exits differentiated by age, gender and education. The paper is of twofold interest for this summer school: First, an unequal distribution of employment chances is the prime factor of (re-)producing problematic social inequalities in modern employment-based societies. Second, a sustainable demographic shift within populations which is redistributing employment chances between different cohorts of these populations is currently being observed in all OECD countries. Hence, the empirical analysis of determinants of changes in the personnel structure of firms advances our understanding of the dependency of unequal employment opportunities on macro-structural processes

While much stratification research has focused on understanding the patterns and consequences of differentiation, previous studies have not considered similarly important variation in students’ trajectories through higher education, and particularly their participation in the labor market. Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997 (NLSY97) indicate that entering and succeeding in a differentiated system of higher education is related to students’ employment patterns. Students with extensive commitment to the labor market during high school are more likely to begin their postsecondary journeys in community colleges as opposed to four-year institutions. Once in higher education, employment is more consequential for students attending community colleges: students in community colleges are more likely to work at high intensities as well as experience more negative consequences for extensive participation in the labor market. Employment also mediates some of the effects of family background on degree completion among community college students. These results highlight the importance of examining the relationship between differentiation and students’ employment patterns for developing a comprehensive model of educational attainment.

The Polish education system has recently undergone a number of reforms leading to substantial expansion and differentiation of tertiary sector. New forms of higher education institutions have been introduced, which have lower entrance requirements and provide shorter and less intensive study programmes. In parallel, there was no clear strategy for reforming the VET system, the role of the state in supporting cooperation between vocational schools and employers declined and currently only few students can receive firm-based training. These developments call for detailed examination of labour market outcomes of graduates, who currently obtain different degrees within Polish education system.
This paper provides the first evidence on the timing of entry into employment, the job quality and duration among young people, who obtained different degrees in Polish education system. The results of this study show that graduates from vocational schools, who participated in firm-based training, have significantly higher transition rate of entry into first job than graduates who completed the same type of school, but received school-based training only. The divergence in occupational status and job duration within group of graduates from vocational schools with and without firm-based training is much more limited, though. The results of this study suggest pronounced differentiation of employment chances among graduates with tertiary education. The graduates from the traditional, most selective and challenging study programmes constitute the most advantaged group in terms of all labour market outcomes. Although young people, who obtained ‘second tier’ tertiary education degrees have advantage over graduates with secondary education, their chances are clearly inferior as compared with graduates from traditional higher education institutions.

The relation between higher education and work has been extensively studied by sociologists and economists. While most of these research focus on the work after higher education, less attention has been devoted to the experience of working during higher education. Interest in this topic is growing in the United States and Great Britain because of the rising costs of attending higher education. Up to now, research on this topic has obtained contradictory results. In Italy the topic has not been so widely analysed despite its relevance. The importance of this issue relies on several considerations. First, employment during university studies is quite spread regardless of low tuition fees and the small number of students who study far from home. Second, there is not a formal distinction between full-time and part-time students and there are no part-time courses for adult learners and for employees. Third, the amount of drop-outs and graduations behind schedule is very high and it has been raising quickly in the youngest cohorts. Fourth, still nowadays there are inequalities in the rates of graduation among different social categories. Thus it is interesting to understand whether and to what extent students’ employment affect the probability of dropping-out and having a delayed graduation (i.e. the consequences of students’ employment). Looking at the equity side, it’s also important to determine whether social origins affect the decision of working during university studies (i.e. the antecedents of students’ employment). In this paper I examine the role of student employment – i.e. working during university – in the reproduction of social inequality in academic outcomes in Italian Higher Education during the 20th century. In the first part, I review previous research results in the US, UK and Italy and discuss several competing hypotheses. In the second part, I use data from the Italian Longitudinal Household Survey (ILFI) to study a) the relation between student employment and academic outcomes; b) the relation between social origin and student employment, and c) the mediating effect of student employment in the relation between social origin and academic outcomes. Bivariate analysis and multinomial logistic regression models show that full-time students are more likely to graduate on time than working-students, but only high-intensity work has a detrimental effect on dropping out. Social origin affects the probability of being a high-intensity worker, but not the likelihood of being a low-intensity worker. Finally, results from a non-linear decomposition analysis suggest that the overall role of student employment in the reproduction of inequality in higher education is low while the most important variable is the type of high-school attended (especially lyceum vs non-academic).

At the beginning of this century several authors including ourselves highlighted the marked differences in employment rates among women which are associated with variations in educational level. Especially among mothers there existed large gaps between lowly skilled women and highly skilled women and these proved to be considerably larger in the continental welfare states.

This paper provides an update of the previous analyses showing that, on the one hand, the relative laggards within the European Union have caught up, but on the other hand, a considerable skill gap remains. Consequently, our previous conclusion on the selectivity of dual earnership remains firmly in place, including the associated poverty effects.

To document causes for this continuing duality in the labour market we focus on two groups of explanations. First we compare the labour market opportunities for low skilled people between countries with relatively good outcomes and those with continuing large skills gaps. Second we link employment and income outcomes to the differences in provisions for the combination for work and care, both regarding the availability of childcare facilities and concerning workplace regulations. We conclude with several policy suggestions.

Educational attainment and social background have crucial impact on individual labour market outcome
and explain part of the differences in hourly earnings of Dutch males and females in their thirties (cf.
Traag et al. 2006). However, actual earnings will not only depend on one’s earnings capacities but also on
the family situation that has an impact on both the labour supply decision and the type of job one chooses.
In this paper, we analyse the relationship between educational attainment, social background, and spouse’s
resources on the chance to have a paid job and on earnings. The labour division within the household is
partly due to cultural factors and individual preferences but will also depend on the earnings capacity of
both partners. It is expected that the relative importance of the partner’s earnings capacities and cultural
factors varies with educational background.
For our analysis we use data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The basis builds the Secondary Education
Pupil Cohort (SLVO) that started in 1982 with 16.813 pupils who were in their last year of primary
education. These pupils were followed until the moment they left full time education. Tests of school
performance and non-verbal intelligence were administered in the first year of their secondary education,
as well as socio-economic background information about the nature and quality of their families of origin.
The dataset has been enriched by register data of the labour market position, income situation, family
composition and neighbourhood information from 1999 to 2005. As proxies for the individual and
partner’s earnings capacity we consider the actual hourly earnings, hourly earnings before cohabitation
and the income and wealth positions of siblings, parents and parents in law.
We find that for women the chance to have a paid job strongly depends on the earnings capacity of their
partner. The higher the earnings capacity of the partner the lower is the chance to have a paid job. The
number of hours does not depend on the husband’s earnings capacity, but on the number and age of
children in the household. For men the opposite is true; the chance to have a paid job does not depend on
his wife’s earnings capacity. Both for men and women earnings, the chance to have a paid job and the
number of hours worked increase with the level of education. The impact of the partner’s earnings
capacity does not seem to vary with educational background, however. For both men and women actual
hourly earnings are positively correlated with the wealth of the father in law, suggesting that there is
positive assortative mating with respect to unobserved earnings traits.

Can welfare states decrease gender inequalities? From earlier answers largely in the
affirmative, in recent years sociologists and labor economists have underlined what they see
as serious unintended negative consequences of gender egalitarian policies, consequences
including increasing occupational segregation, intensified employer statistical discrimination,
and decline of women’s career ambitions. Pointing to major methodological problems for
these interpretations, we re-examine potential effects by unpacking welfare state policies into
a multi-dimensional typology of gender-relevant institutional policy structures in 18 countries.
The broad spectrum of dependent variables includes occupational and work segregation,
motherhood penalties, as well as gender gaps in access to paid work, top earnings, managerial
positions, corporate boards, and influential roles in democratic politics. Our gender policy
typology identifies major differences in outcomes among countries, but fears of perverse
effects of egalitarian policies can not be verified.

The aim of this paper is to find out how ethnicity influences labour market entry in Estonia. Paper focuses on ethnical Estonians and Non-Estonians first job quality in period 1991-1997 and 2001-2006. The main question is to what extent ethnicity and Estonian language skill influence youth occupational status in their first job. The data to be used is the Estonian Labour Force Surveys conducted in years 1995, 1997 and 2002-2006. Results from linear regression analysis indicate that both ethnicity and Estonian language skill effect significantly occupational status in first job. Non- Estonians who speak Estonian attain somewhat lower initial occupational status than Estonians. Investment in country specific human capital is more useful in period 1991-1997, whereas in years 2001-2006 Estonian proficient Non-Estonians reach considerably lower occupational status in their first job than Estonians even in case of similar educational level. In general, education is very significant resource that has an effect on youth first job quality.

Trends in paid work time and unpaid work time derived from the Multinational Time Use Study indicate a slow and incomplete convergence of women’s and men’s work patterns over the last 40 years in OECD countries. The evidence seems to suggest that 2009 represents an approximate mid-point in a 70-80 year process of gender convergence in work patterns.
Nevertheless, analysing UK data from a life course perspective reveals some remaining barriers to gender equality. Although men and women have more or less the same amount of total work time, women increase their proportion of unpaid domestic work to all work steadily over the conventional life course. Men’s paid work time, by contrast, remains relatively stable and constitutes the major share of their work time. Furthermore, gender segregation in domestic work persists. Women are responsible for both routine types (e.g. cleaning and cooking) and non-routine types of domestic work (e.g. childcare, shopping and gardening). In contrast, men spend little time on routine housework. Their increases in domestic work time over the life course concentrate mainly on care and other non-routine types of domestic work.

The overall results may suggest a “lagged adaptation” in the division of labour between men and women. That is, the gender ideologies established in childhood are challenged by observation and experience of gender roles that are inconsistent with those inherited assumptions. This may lead in turn to partial adaptations in the ideologies transmitted to the next generation. Gender equality is most difficult to achieve in traditionally feminine types of domestic work.

Earlier studies disagree whether differences in the human capital configuration or employer discrimination explain second generation Turkish migrants‘ disadvantages when entering the labor market. This research understood the successful completion of an occupational education as part of the human capital configuration and identified it as the major predictor of a successful transition into the labor market. However they disregarded that access to occupational education in Germany is for the most part provided by companies, and hence discrimination can occur already when companies decide whom to take in for their occupational education programs. We therefore analyzed the whole secondary school to labor market transition using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study. Human capital variables, including receiving country specific capital as e.g. German language abilities or ethnic composition of networks, did not fully explain the ethnic penalty Turkish migrants experience when entering vocational education. Analyzing who starts and who manages to complete a vocational education, significant residuals for Turkish remain. Estimating labor market entry models, we find vocational education to be one of the strongest predictors of a successful transition into paid labor. Finally, interaction models show that a complete vocational education pays of less for Turkish migrants. The latter finding is direct evidence for statistical discrimination. Our conservative conclusion is that the available human capital measures do not fully explain Turkish migrants‘ disadvantages.

Earlier studies disagree over whether differences in the human capital configuration or employer discrimination explain second-generation migrants’ disadvantages when entering German labor markets. While the human capital explanation has been tested extensively, less convincing research explores employer discrimination. Furthermore, past research understood the successful completion of a vocational education as part of the human capital configuration and identified it as the major predictor of a successful transition into the labor market. This disregards, however, that for the most part companies are the providers of access to vocational education in Germany, and hence discrimination may occur when companies make their enrollment decisions for these programs. Importantly, this suggests investigating an earlier time point in the process when discrimination may occur than previous studies have considered. Therefore, using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study, we analyze the transition from secondary school into the labor market in two steps: first, the transition into vocational education, and second into employment. The GSOEP allows a comprehensive specification of human capital and testing of corollary hypotheses derived from statistical discrimination and taste discrimination.
Using discrete event history models for access to and completion of vocational education programs we find significant and substantial ethnic residuals especially for young Turkish men, even when controlling for receiving country specific capital. This raises serious doubts in specifying vocational education as part of human capital. For the second part of the process, the actual transition into regular employment, we use hybrid estimation modeling. This allows the simultaneous estimation of fixed and random effects, i.e. the estimation of the full set of theoretically relevant predictors. Human capital, including receiving country specific resources, such as German language abilities or the ethnic composition of networks, does not fully explain the ethnic penalties young males with Turkish migration background experience. Finally, interaction models show that a completed vocational education pays off less for Turkish as compared to Germans, again the effect is pronounced for Turkish men. The latter finding is direct evidence for statistical discrimination. Regarding taste discrimination we find no evidence, although, this is conducted through an indirect test. In conclusion, the inclusive human capital measures available in the GSOEP do not fully explain Turkish second-generation migrants’ disadvantages; partly it can be attributed to statistical discrimination.

This paper studies changes in the timing of marriage and first childbirth between post-
WWII Italian generations. In particular, it analyses how macro-level changes, such as
processes of regulation and de-regulation of the Italian labour market and their effects on
the individual work trajectories, affect the time of transition to parental roles.
Standing at the core of this paper is the idea that, given the characteristics of the subprotective
Italian welfare and the insider scenario boomed by the 80s-90s partial and
targeted labour market deregulation, to be a young and instable worker or, more generally,
a marginal or secondary labour market participant produces a delay in the transition to
adulthood particularly for what a delay in marriage and childbirth for the last cohorts of the
Italian population are concerned.
This question becomes even more central if we consider that non-standard or unstable
work experiences as traps from which is hard to escape while hampering the transition into
better employment conditions – which, in the context of an insurance-based welfare,
directly translate in social rights. The negative effects of these processes regard mainly
youngest cohorts, approximately individuals born from the second half of the Sixties on. In
particular, individuals poorly endowed with personal and familiar resources are those who
experiment this situation to a greater extent, enhancing in this way the role of the well
known factors affecting social inequality. These people, “disembedded” from the “fordist”
welfare guarantees, do not manage to catch the opportunities offered by the new “flexible”
labour market and post-fordist productive environment.
The analysis will be conducted on ILFI (Longitudinal Survey of Italian Families), a
prospective panel survey that includes retrospective information on education, work career
and family dynamics. As regards to methods, duration EHA models are employed.
Results show how the combination of the mentioned institutional factors produces
additional risks of social exclusion that are strongly cohorts-biased and that are adding to
the pre-existing structural factors of social stratification and inequality.

This paper is the concluding chapter of the book manuscript that explores the role of the education system in the process of labour market integration in ten CEE countries (Eastern Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine and Russia). This book is a first systematic comparative study on the consequence of system transformation on young people’s educational attainment and labour market integration which moves beyond simple contrasts of socialism vs. capitalism as modes of social organization by putting into focus the institutional diversity in post-socialist societies, in which stratification processes are embedded.

For the ten CEE countries we analyze, we can document educational expansion and differentiation of tertiary education at a speed hardly ever observed in Western societies, with substantial variations across countries in the role of market-based financing of higher education. At the same time in many countries, we observe a decline in the role of vocational schools at the secondary level, which had formed a crucial part of skill supply under the socialist production regime. While these post-transformation trends are general, their dynamics and consequences differ depending on the national historic and institutional context.

Our results of the educational attainment show that the expansion of tertiary education has benefited children from the middle classes. We further show whether and how expansion, stratification and diversification of higher education as well as the changing significance of vocational education have altered educational attainment and labour market entry. While more favourable performance of tertiary graduates in terms of speed of entry and quality of the first job is observable in all CEE countries, the relative advantage of tertiary graduates varies with the degree of expansion and differentiation of the tertiary sector. Nevertheless, even relatively inferior tertiary tracks still have better payoffs compared to secondary education in the majority of countries. In countries with shrinking vocational secondary education vocationally-oriented lower tertiary tracks provide a functioning substitute.

The role of vocational degrees is highly differentiated depending on the country-specific institutional arrangements. In countries that inherited or re-established a German-Austrian tradition of strong vocational orientation at the secondary level and adhered to vocationalism and apprenticeships as a key pathway into the labour market, vocational education still provides a viable alternative to tertiary education. In the absence of an institutional framework supporting effective vocational education, however, vocational programs have become a last-choice option for disadvantaged youth.

This paper is the concluding chapter of the book manuscript that explores the role of the education system in the process of labour market integration in ten CEE countries (Eastern Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine and Russia). This book is a first systematic comparative study on the consequence of system transformation on young people’s educational attainment and labour market integration which moves beyond simple contrasts of socialism vs. capitalism as modes of social organization by putting into focus the institutional diversity in post-socialist societies, in which stratification processes are embedded.

For the ten CEE countries we analyze, we can document educational expansion and differentiation of tertiary education at a speed hardly ever observed in Western societies, with substantial variations across countries in the role of market-based financing of higher education. At the same time in many countries, we observe a decline in the role of vocational schools at the secondary level, which had formed a crucial part of skill supply under the socialist production regime. While these post-transformation trends are general, their dynamics and consequences differ depending on the national historic and institutional context.

Our results of the educational attainment show that the expansion of tertiary education has benefited children from the middle classes. We further show whether and how expansion, stratification and diversification of higher education as well as the changing significance of vocational education have altered educational attainment and labour market entry. While more favourable performance of tertiary graduates in terms of speed of entry and quality of the first job is observable in all CEE countries, the relative advantage of tertiary graduates varies with the degree of expansion and differentiation of the tertiary sector. Nevertheless, even relatively inferior tertiary tracks still have better payoffs compared to secondary education in the majority of countries. In countries with shrinking vocational secondary education vocationally-oriented lower tertiary tracks provide a functioning substitute.

The role of vocational degrees is highly differentiated depending on the country-specific institutional arrangements. In countries that inherited or re-established a German-Austrian tradition of strong vocational orientation at the secondary level and adhered to vocationalism and apprenticeships as a key pathway into the labour market, vocational education still provides a viable alternative to tertiary education. In the absence of an institutional framework supporting effective vocational education, however, vocational programs have become a last-choice option for disadvantaged youth.

In this study, we analyze occupational attainment and career progression over the life course for Swedish men and women, born in 1925-74. We find that careers progress (measured as improvements in occupational prestige) fast during the first ten years in the labour market, and flattens out afterwards (approximately between 30-40 years of age). This is in line with the occupational status maturation hypothesis.

Both class origin and educational attainment affect occupational attainment, but the effects of educational attainment vary more over the career, depending on the educational attainment level in question. Successive cohorts of women gain higher occupational prestige, and continue to gain in occupational prestige longer across their careers. We also find that cohorts that entered the labour market in times of economic downturns and restructuring (the oil crisis years and the early 1990s) had more difficulties in establishing their careers. Returns to education generally increase across cohorts, while class background differences decrease, as has been reported in earlier research.

Origins of the modern career: Individual determinants of career mobility during modernization The example of the Netherlands ca. 1840– 1940 Word count: 231 This paper studies the origins of the modern career, more specifically we will test to what extent current theoretical explanations of career mobility hold in a long term perspective, i.e. the 19th and 20th century. The emergence of the modern career is frequently dated back to the mid to late nineteenth century and it has been assumed that careers have become more predictable and successful ever since. Individual characteristics such as parental status, demographic characteristics, gender and being a migrant are thought to be important factors which shape occupational careers. We will analyze in how far the impact of individual characteristics changes over time and may lead to more predictable and successful career patterns. Thereby we contribute to specifying the general conditions which shape careers, especially in times of societal changes (e.g. modernization or globalization). The period under study is an excellent testing ground as it was characterized by major socio-economic changes such as industrialization (mechanization of labor), urbanization and the rise of modern means of transport, leading to tremendous changes in the educational and occupational system. We will make use of newly released unique Dutch data. The Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) is based on birth, death and marriage certificates, and population registers. It includes information on social background, household composition (e.g. marital status, number of children) and the occupational life history of individuals born between 1812 and 1922.

The paper argues that due to the increased labour market participation of women in part-time
jobs, work norms have changed. It has become less evident who should work how many
hours, and this is a main cause why Dutch citizens show less support for the norm that work is
a prime social obligation. We argue that the social mechanism for the norm change is to be
located in adjustment processes in the households. We elaborate hypotheses on the basis of
this argument, and test these hypotheses by applying multi-level regression analysis on the
OSA Labour Supply Panel surveys for the period 1988-2002. The results of these tests show
that in the traditional breadwinner-families both partners, the breadwinner and the housewife,
show strong support for the norm that work is a social obligation. Working women and men
with working partners show less support for the norm. Due to the increase of the share of
working women, support for the norm has decreased. The results show that every new cohort
shows less support for the norm. The general picture is that in the Netherlands, partly due to
the growth of part-time work, the traditional work ethic is declining. For younger generations,
with both partners participating in the labour market, work is increasingly becoming only an
instrumental value. Nevertheless, because the instrumental value of work is high, there is only
a slow and limited decline of labour supply.

Part time work is a direct product of globalization. More dynamic and competitive labor markets require new forms of employments that are flexible, increase efficiency and stimulate competitiveness. This explains why part time work as such has become more diffuse in many Western European countries, including also Italy in the later years.

At the micro level, part time work offers flexibility and adaptability to employers but is also attractive among workers and among workers, notably among women. The reason for the latter is its role in the reconciliation of the “conflict” between work and family, which mostly affects women given that they are responsible for home matters despite working. Indeed, part time work enables an individual to manage the time more effectively and balance better between the two aspects of privatelife. However, it is also true that part‐time jobs are often limiting because they are concentrated in certain sectors, might offer comparatively worse career prospects and might belong to the category of “lower importance” jobs. This is exactly why it is difficult to provide a clear cut on the topic.

But, rather than focusing on advantages and disadvantages of part time work in comparison to full time, based on objective evaluation, this paper intends to provide a comparison of different perceptions of satisfaction that are experienced by female employees prforming these jobs.

Several main hypotheses are tested; the hypothesis that women who work part time will experience higher satisfaction with the division of their time within and ouside of the family was confirmed in the data. Similarly, the hypothesis that part time workers experience better time management was in accordance with the final results. The hypotheses on life satisfaction, however, were not fully justified with the data. Socio demographic characteristics bring changes in patterns of life satisfaction but not always in the expected direction. Overall, women who work part time are less satisfied with their life when compared to full‐time workers.

The focus of this paper is on the relationships between social origin, participation in tertiary education (enrolment, drop-out, enrolment at second level and post-tertiary education) and occupational outcomes of degreeholders (unstable job, overeducation) in a recent period of university and labour market reforms (the “Bologna process” and the flexibilization of employment contracts). In the first part of the paper we review these institutional reforms and previous research on this topic in Italy. In the second part we analyse data from several cross-section waves of the Upper Secondary Graduates Survey and the University Graduates Survey which cover both pre- and post-reform cohorts of students. Results from logistic regression models show a slight decline in the effect of parents’ education on enrolment in tertiary education, while a reduction and again a new increase of inequality in drop-outs. We find smaller effects of parents’ education on the risks of having unstable or overeducated jobs and they are stable over time. Our conclusion is that some traits of inequalities connected to tertiary education processes are changing in the direction of a slight reduction of the social origins weight, but these shifts seem mainly due to general macro trend and not to the specific reforms occurred in Italy.

This paper brings together two research fields: on work-related training and high performance work practices (HPWP), respectively. We estimate models of both the determinants and the impact of training. Our models of the determinants of training confirm previous research: age, education, contract, tenure, and firm size all influence training. Several components of HPWP are associated with a higher probability of training, specifically, general (non-firm-specific) training. Participation in general training is associated with higher earnings, as is involvement in highly participative and consultative working arrangements, and performance reward systems. These patterns of training, and returns to training, are broadly consistent with HPWP approaches and represent a challenge to human capital theory.

In the context of the ageing of the population, society cannot afford to ignore the working potential of older people in order to sustain economic competitiveness. However, the employment rate of workers older than 50 years is low in the Czech Republic and is the result especially of the above-average unemployment rate of this age group and the frequent use of early retirement schemes. This study views the social problem of the low employment rate of older people as a complex issue with a range of different causes and consequences and suggests the following differing reasons for people older than 50 years , who have not yet reached retirement age, exiting the job market early: a) the inability of older people to keep a job or find a new one due to the low level of human capital, b) age discrimination, negative stereotypes and lack of demand for this group of workers leading to social exclusion from the job market and c) a lack of motivation of older people to work. In conclusion, political initiatives have been put forward for the promotion of the employment of older workers in the Czech Republic.

While a considerable body of research about tertiary education expansion and its labour market returns exist for western industrialized countries, far less is known concerning Eastern European countries. However, especially the rapid tertiary education expansion seen there in recent years demand research on the specific conditions governing school-to-work transition among tertiary education graduates. In this respect, Ukraine is an interesting case because of its massive expansion in tertiary educational attainment in recent years. This expansion has been accompanied by an increased differentiation of higher education institutions.
In previous research we have shown that even relatively inferior tertiary tracks still have better payoffs compared to secondary education in terms of different labour market outcome dimensions such as the speed at labour market entry and the occupational status attained. The central research question of this contribution is, however, whether we can identify differences between graduates of various tertiary education institutions. From a theoretical point of view, we expect to find large heterogeneity within the group of tertiary graduates in terms of labour market prospects due to differences in self-selection mechanisms, signalling capacities, skill acquisitions, and closure processes. Furthermore, the strong tertiary education expansion might have outpaced the demand for high-skilled and led to a certain degree of occupational mismatches among tertiary graduates.
Our analyses are based on retrospective micro-data data from unique, high-quality, large-scale Ukrainian school-leaver survey, which is representative for the whole country. The data allow for a differentiated view at the level of higher tertiary education in the light of its remarkable expansion such as different nationally standardized levels of institutional accreditation, differences between public and private higher education institutions, tuition and non-tuition based institutions, part-time and full-time students as well as field of study differences.
We investigate the performance of graduates from different higher education institutions in a multidimensional evaluation looking at the pace of labour market entry and, especially, the matching quality of the first significant job attained. The matching quality is measured by subjective assessments of the respondents whether and how much their educational level deviates from the education required for the specific job they perform. Furthermore, we use an objective approach of measuring occupational matching by analyzing the transition probabilities to specific skill segments in the labour market.

Studies have shown that women receive lower wage returns to attained occupational prestige than do men. Studies also show that family responsibilities affect men and women differently which may be one major cause of women’s wage penalty.
In this article I examine if the gender difference in wage return for attained occupational prestige can be explained by diverse family obligations for men and women and if gender differences in work characteristics, which are difficult to combine with family duties, account for some of the gender wage gap in returns for attained occupational prestige.
If women’s family obligations are one major cause of women’s drawback the negative interaction between women and occupational prestige with regard to wages would be larger for mothers and married/cohabiting women than for single women without children.
Results show a gender wage gap between married/cohabiting men and women with children which grows with occupational prestige. However, this interaction between gender and prestige is insignificant among single women and men and for couples without children. Further, when controlling for time consuming work the gender wage gap for couples with children according to occupational prestige narrows, especially in occupations with high prestige.

Unemployment insurance (UI) sanctions in the form of benefit reductions are intended to set disincentives for UI recipients to stay unemployed. Empirical evidence about the effects of UI sanctions in Germany is sparse. Using administrative data we investigate the effects of sanctions on the reemployment probability in West Germany for individuals who entered UI receipt between April 2000 and March 2001. By applying a matching approach that takes timing of events into account, we identify the ex post effect of UI sanctions. As a robustness check a difference-in-differences matching estimator is applied. The results indicate positive effects on the employment probability in regular employment for both women and men