1. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Erzsébet Bukodi and Shirley Dex GeNet Final Conference Cambridge, 26-27 March 2009 Work-life career mobility: changing gender differences?

2. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Research questions Are there gender differences in the pattern of work-life occupational mobility? Are womens and mens occupational trajectories (in terms of earnings and social status) converging or diverging over time, across cohorts?

3. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Overview Policy and legislative context Data and labour market context Two measures for occupational standing Occupational attainment over the career A typology of occupational histories The role of education and entry position in work-life occupational mobility

4. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Some relevant background 1970s was the decade of major legislative and policy change on equality: Equal Pay legislation 1975 Anti sex discrimination legislation Statutory maternity leave Decade for family policy changes from 1997 onwards National Child Care Strategy; Sure Start Programme; Working Families Tax Credit; Part-time work directive; Family leave directive; parental leave; Paid paternity leave; enhanced and wider eligibility maternity leave, Min wage.

5. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Data: Three British Birth Cohort Studies MRC National Survey of Health and Development: all children born in England, Wales and Scotland in one week in 1946. follow up data collections took place twice from ages 1 to 4, 8 times between ages 5-15, 7 times between ages 16-31 and 3 times between ages 32-53 The National Child Development Study Census of babies born in a certain week of 1958 in GB 7 main interview waves up to 2004 (age 46) The British Cohort Study Census of babies born in a certain week of 1970 in GB 6 sweeps up to 2004 (age 34) In all surveys: Retrospective occupational histories

6. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Data: sample size MenWomen Cohort 194649064928 Cohort 195872767044 Cohort 197060066166

7. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Two measures for occupational standing Earnings and social status can be seen as major rewards obtained via occupation Occupational earnings scale: An updated and extended version of the Nickell scale the average hourly earnings of all employees, men and women, working full-time it provides a score for each of the 77 SOC90 minor occupational groups Occupational status scale: Chan – Goldthorpe scale extracting principal dimension from data on social interaction among members of occupations (close friendship) provides scores for 31 occupational categories (either SOC90 minor groups or combinations of them)

8. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Earnings and status hierarchies: different ones The occupational earnings and occupational status hierarchies, although weakly correlated, are still clearly different scales. Eg. when cross-classifying all jobs ever held by NCDS men aged 16-46, just over 25% of all men were on the main diagonal; over a half of men are in occupations that yield higher earnings relative to their status; Under 25% of men in occupations with lower earnings than their status.

9. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Labour market conditions at entry 1946 cohort1958 cohort1970 cohort Left school Unemp rate % Left school Unemp rate % Left school Unemp rate % 15 (1961)2.016 (1974)3.016 (1986)11.8 18 (1964)1.818 (1976)5.818 (1989) 8.6 21 (1967)2.521 (1979)4.221 (1991)10.4

10. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Labour market conditions over cohorts life-courses Cohort 1946 aged 22-34 Cohort 1958 aged 22-34 Cohort 1970 aged 22-34

11. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Economic conditions: Growth in GDP Cohort 1946: LM entryCohort 1958: LM entryCohort 1970: LM entry Cohort 1946 aged 22-34Cohort 1958 aged 22-34Cohort 1970 aged 22-34

12. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Occupational earnings attainment over age MENWOMEN

13. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Occupational status attainment over age MENWOMEN

14. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk A typology of occupational histories, ages 16 to 34 Steadily upward: individual has experienced one or more upward occupational moves, but no downward occupational move. Unstable upward: individual has experienced either upward or downward mobility or both, but most recent job falls into a higher occupational level than his/her first job. Steadily downward: individual has experienced one or more downward occupational moves, but no upward occupational move. Unstable downward: an individual has experienced either upward or downward mobility or both, but his/her most recent job is in a lower occupational level than the first job. Stable/counter mobile: an individual has not experienced any occupational mobility or has experienced either upward or downward mobility or both, but his/her first and most recent jobs are in the same level of the occupational scale.

15. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Work-life occupational earnings mobility

16. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Work-life occupational status mobility

17. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Two scales: differing patterns of gender differences Coefficients for gender (woman=1) Dependent variable: typology Occupational earnings scale Occupational status scale Cohort 1946Stable/Counter mobile (ref.) Steadily upward-0.010.61** Unstable upward-1.32**-0.27 Unstable downward-1.94**-1.30** Steadily downward0.24*-0.58** Cohort 1958Stable/Counter mobile (ref.) Steadily upward-0.39**0.48** Unstable upward-1.02**-0.41** Unstable downward-1.08**-1.32** Steadily downward0.15-0.49** Cohort 1970Stable/Counter mobile (ref.) Steadily upward-0.35**0.41** Unstable upward-0.24*0.17 Unstable downward-0.15-0.76** Steadily downward0.03 -0.40** Multinomial logistic regression, dependent variable: the typology; separately for each cohort Covariates in the model: -gender, - first occupational status, -only full-time work over the career (dummy), -work experience - education at LM entry, - father's social class : managerial & professional (dummy)

18. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk The role of education and career entry Multinomial regression: Dependent variable: the 5-fold typology Covariates: education, first occupational status, only full-time work over the career, fathers class: managerial & professional Separately for cohorts and genders Separately for the earnings and the status scale Calculating predicted proportions of career types for differing levels of education for differing levels of first occupation

19. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk The role of education 1946 cohort: Remarkably stable career for degree-holders (low rates of upward/downward mobility) 1958 cohort: very unstable career regardless of level of qualification (especially for women with part-time experience and men) For the less well educated, higher rates of downward mobility, especially in the 1958 cohort For the tertiary educated, higher rates of upward mobility, but for vast majority of 1958 cohort, upward moves are followed by downward moves much higher probability in 1970 cohort of a steadily upward career (especially for men) Generally, stronger effects of education for women in all cohorts

20. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk The first occupations - striking gender differences Earnings hierarchy: far greater immobility at the bottom of the hierarchy for women than men, especially for women with some part-time experience womens chances of mobility out of the bottom level of the earnings hierarchy are even getting worse However, in case of the status scale womens chances for mobility out of the bottom are much higher than mens, even if they experienced part-time work over their careers Women and men, who start out at the top, tend to have relatively stable careers; but this is much more apparent in the 1946 and the 1970 than in the 1958 cohort

21. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Conclusions Occupational status: women are more likely than men to move upwards bad effects of part-time work are deteriorating over time Occupational earnings: women are less likely than men to move upwards, and are more likely to move downwards womens chances of moving out of the bottom are getting worse on average, declining gender differences in this respect Gender differences in career mobility: depending on how we measure them

22. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Conclusions The 1958 cohort: very unstable occupational careers, especially for men, at all levels of qualification, and regardless of the occupational levels at career entry: the effects of economic circumstances under which they developed their early careers