Faculty by Faculty. Family Background and Employment among Social Sciences and Humanities Graduates of the UCM in 2003

Abstract

Many studies find an effect of social origins on occupation and income, even after controlling education. This effect, usually rather small, might be an artifice resulting from poor control of education. The present paper examines the importance of thoroughly controlling education taking into account singular university degrees. We study the ‘classism’ of the labour market for a cohort of Graduates in Social Sciences and Humanities from the University Complutense at Madrid (UCM) in the six years from their graduation in 1997 until 2003. This is the year of the survey through which we can measure the influence of the social status of the parents on the working opportunities of their children, not only with a university degree, but with the same university degree. We find that the effect of social background on the professional class and income wanes when taking diplomas into account, and does not affects the majority of the professional occupations, but some of them, such as Political Sciences, Sociology and Economics. This finding paves the way to test the ways through which this influence operates.