Skills, positional good or social closure? The role of education across structural-institutional labour market settings

Abstract

A theoretical approach is formulated that connects various theories of why education has an effect on labour market outcomes with institutional settings in which such theories provide the most likely mechanism. Three groups of mechanisms are distinguished: education as an indicator of productive skills, as a positional good and as a means for social closure. Conditions were formulated under which labour market behaviour is likely to correspond to the behavioural models underlying the three mechanism groups. To test the theoretical relationship between settings and mechanisms, I formulated hypotheses on setting variation in the (horizontal and vertical) process of matching educational level and field of study to jobs and its consequences for wages. Analyses in which Dutch survey data were combined with industry statistics confirmed the hypotheses. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Keywords

Author Keywords

industry institutions The Netherlands job match Mechanisms Comparative stratification

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Department of Sociology, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

Funding & Acknowledgements

European Commission, EC

perspective. He is currently involved as co-coordinator, with the research project GINI (Growing Inequalities’ Impacts) funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. Research for the current paper is made possible through a personal VIDI grant to the author funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, grant number 016.085.335.

Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO

Grant: 016.085.335

perspective. He is currently involved as co-coordinator, with the research project GINI (Growing Inequalities’ Impacts) funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. Research for the current paper is made possible through a personal VIDI grant to the author funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, grant number 016.085.335.

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Skills, positional good or social closure? The role of education across structural-institutional labour market settings

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