Thijs Bol

Educational Systems and the Trade-Off between Labor Market Allocation and Equality of Educational Opportunity

Educational systems with a high level of tracking and vocational orientation have been shown to improve the allocation of school-leavers in the labor market. However, tracked educational systems are also known to increase inequality of educational opportunity. This presumed trade-off between equality and labor market preparation is clearly rooted in two different perspectives on the origin of differentiation in educational systems, dating back to the nineteenth century. Tracking was seen both as a way to prepare students for an industrializing labor market and as a way for the elite to formalize social distances in the educational system. We empirically study the trade-off with newly developed country-level indicators for tracking and vocational orientation. Our country-level regressions largely support the existence of the trade-off between labor market allocation and equality of opportunity.

Grandparents’ resources and grandchildren’s schooling: Does grandparental involvement moderate the grandparent effect?

Recent studies have argued that grandparents have a direct effect on grandchildrens achievements, net of parental resources. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. One explanation is that grandchildren can benefit from the cultural resources that grandparents transmit to their grandchildren. If this is the case, one would expect strong effects in families where grandparents are highly involved in the lives of their grandchildren and weak or no effects in other families. Using new nationally representative survey data on three generations in the Netherlands, we examine if and how grandchildrens educational attainment is affected by three grandparental resources: education, occupational status, and cultural resources. We explore how these effects vary by the strength of the tie between grandparent and grandchild. We find no evidence for a main direct grandparental effect, nor do we find interactions with the strength of the tie between grandparent and grandchild. These null-findings are discussed in light of the mixed body of evidence that has been accumulated in the literature and contemporary theorizing on grandparenting.

Has education become more positional? Educational expansion and labour market outcomes, 1985–2007

Educational expansion has had important effects on society. However, it has not yet been acknowledged that expansion might have changed the way in which education operates in labour markets. We argue that, as a result of educational expansion, a positional model of education becomes more important whereby labour market rewards do not primarily depend on absolute skill levels, but instead on workers’ relative positions in the labour market. Analyzing data from the International Social Survey Programme from 1985 to 2007 for 28 countries, we find support for the claim that education has become increasingly positional with educational expansion.

Economic returns to occupational closure in the German skilled trades.

Recent sociological studies argue that wage differentials between occupations are partly attributable to occupational closure. Occupations set up barriers which restrict the supply of occupational labor, thereby generating an economic rent. In this article we study occupational closure in the skilled trades of Germany, where the Trade and Crafts code restricts self-employment in 41 occupations to those who are master craftsmen. Newly gathered occupational data about the Trade and Crafts code is mapped on micro data from the German Microcensus of 2006. The central finding of our empirical analyses is that self-employed workers with comparable levels of human capital and demographic characteristics earn structurally more in closed occupations. We argue that this earnings premium is a rent, obtained by self-employed because of the entry restriction that is laid down by the Trade and Crafts code.

School-to-Work Linkages in the United States, Germany, and France

A new research agenda is proposed for assessing the strength of linkages between educational credentials, including fields of study, and occupational positions. The authors argue that a theoretically fruitful conception of linkage strength requires a focus on granular structure as well as the macroinstitutional characteristics of pathways between education and the labor market. Building on recent advances in the study of multigroup segregation, the authors find that Germany has stronger overall linkage strength than France or the United States. However, the extent to which the three countries differ varies substantially across educational levels and fields of study. The authors illustrate the substantive importance of the new approach by showing, first, that the standard organization space/qualification space distinction poorly describes the contemporary difference between Germany and France and, second, that relative mean occupational wages in Germany and the United States vary directly with the relative linkage strength for occupations in the two countries.

The Matthew Effect in Science Funding

Significance Why do scientists with similar backgrounds and abilities often end up achieving very different degrees of success? A classic explanation is that academic achievement exhibits a “Matthew effect”: Early successes increase future success chances. We analyze data from a large academic funding program that present a unique opportunity to quantify the Matthew effect and identify generative mechanisms. Our results show that winners just above the funding threshold accumulate more than twice as much funding during the subsequent eight years as nonwinners with near-identical review scores that fall just below the threshold. This effect is partly caused by nonwinners ceasing to compete for other funding opportunities, revealing a “participation” mechanism driving the Matthew effect. A classic thesis is that scientific achievement exhibits a “Matthew effect”: Scientists who have previously been successful are more likely to succeed again, producing increasing distinction. We investigate to what extent the Matthew effect drives the allocation of research funds. To this end, we assembled a dataset containing all review scores and funding decisions of grant proposals submitted by recent PhDs in a €2 billion granting program. Analyses of review scores reveal that early funding success introduces a growing rift, with winners just above the funding threshold accumulating more than twice as much research funding (€180,000) during the following eight years as nonwinners just below it. We find no evidence that winners’ improved funding chances in subsequent competitions are due to achievements enabled by the preceding grant, which suggests that early funding itself is an asset for acquiring later funding. Surprisingly, however, the emergent funding gap is partly created by applicants, who, after failing to win one grant, apply for another grant less often.

Does Diversity Pay? A Replication of Herring (2009)

In an influential article published in the American Sociological Review in 2009, Herring finds that diverse workforces are beneficial for business. His analysis supports seven out of eight hypotheses on the positive effects of gender and racial diversity on sales revenue, number of customers, perceived relative market share, and perceived relative profitability. This comment points out that Herring’s analysis contains two errors. First, missing codes on the outcome variables are treated as substantive codes. Second, two control variables—company size and establishment size—are highly skewed, and this skew obscures their positive associations with the predictor and outcome variables. We replicate Herring’s analysis correcting for both errors. The findings support only one of the original eight hypotheses, suggesting that diversity is nonconsequential, rather than beneficial, to business success.

Occupational closure and wages in Norway

Recent literature has pointed to occupational closure in order to explain wage inequality between occupations. The basic argument of occupational closure is that average occupational wages are higher in closed occupations because these occupations are better able to establish and maintain institutional barriers to access. In this study we analyse occupational closure and its wage effects in Norway by matching newly gathered occupational data on four different closure institutions (licensure, certifications, unionization, and educational credentials) to register data. The results show strong wage effects of licensure and unionization, net of occupational skill requirements. Our analyses furthermore show substantial differences in the returns to occupational closure across social classes: licensure is especially beneficial for higher classes, whereas unionization generates rents for lower classes, implying that occupational closure affects social inequality in Norway.

Income Inequality and Gambling: A Panel Study in the United States (1980–1997)

While there are many studies that examine the consequences of increasing income inequality, its effects on gambling behavior have not yet been studied. In this article, we argue that income inequality increases the average expenditure on gambling. Using longitudinal state-level data for the United States (1980–1997), we estimate fixed-effects models to analyze two types of gambling expenditure: pari-mutuel betting and lottery spending. Our findings show a positive effect of increasing income inequality on lottery expenditure. For pari-mutuel betting, the result is not linear, as for higher levels of income inequality, the positive effect decreases, suggesting that the effect flattens out when the increase in income inequality is highest. We argue that there are three reasons why we find a positive effect of income inequality of gambling expenditure: increasing mobility aspirations, availability of resources in the upper part of the distribution, and status anxiety in the lower part of the distribution.

Measuring educational institutional diversity: tracking, vocational orientation and standardisation

Educational systems differ in at least three dimensions: the timing and form of tracking students, the extent to which a system provides vocationally specific skills, and the extent to which an educational system is standardised nationwide. Existing conceptualisations of these three dimensions are rather fragmented, and in this chapter we develop new indicators for a large number of countries, based on various sources of data (OECD, UNESCO, TIMSS, PISA and Eurydice). With our new indicators we examine how educational systems affect four core functions of schooling: equality of opportunity, the optimisation of student skills, the allocation of students to the labour market, and the preparation for active participation in society at large.