The issue of social class is one that has been broadly investigated in the social sciences although it is one that has seen fluctuating periods in which the concept of social class is either highlighted or considered as immaterial (Della Porta & Diani, 2009). Nonetheless, Edgell’s (1993) critique on class proposed that social class remains one of the most broadly explored components in social sciences research. Beck (2004), however, argued that social class has faded into irrelevance within the social sciences. The significance of social class, however, is socially reliant and this is reflected in differences in the focus of research between different countries, proposing that Beck’s (2004) argument may be reflective of certain societies but not others. Smith et al (1998), in a study on the impact of socioeconomic differentials on health outcomes, proposed that studies in the UK tended to concentrate on socioeconomic differentials as established in terms of occupational social class while studies in the US have utilized measures that centre on educational levels. The motivation behind these diverse measures, as indicated by Smith et al (1998), is a result of information accessibility as opposed to any explicit theories of the conceivable impact of the different dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage.
This essay will discuss the possibly interconnected themes of social class and education levels and how these relate to life opportunities, specifically employment opportunities, in the UK. This essay has two major objectives. Firstly, it will endeavour to determine whether social class itself directly affects employment opportunities. Secondly, it will also determine whether there is an important relationship between social class and education, since education levels significantly influence employment opportunities.
The impacts of social class on education levels has long been a matter of study; thus, this section focuses on some of the results from the more influential studies on the subject despite their age. Smith et al (1998) highlighted an important difference between socioeconomic empowerment and deprivation in terms of social class or education levels: occupational social class is something that can change throughout adult life while education levels are more likely to remain static after early adulthood. However, the evidence proposes that social class affects education levels in the UK and, significantly, that this happens in the crucial formative years of an individual’s life. The UK Department for Education, in a white paper entitled “Excellence in Schools” (DfEE, 1997), emphasised the significance of the involvement of parents to enable children to exploit their potential from schooling. There is evidence from the literature, that parental involvement improves educational outcomes (Ho & Willms, 1996; Fan & Chen, 2001). Fan and Chen (2001) indicated that the concept of having parental involvement in their children’s education is instinctively appealing and that, while some research methodologies that have been used in the past to explore the connection between parental involvement and educational outcomes have been challenging, the available evidence supports this perception.
Lareau (1987) theorised that there were three methods towards explaining differences in parental involvement according to social class. In the culture of poverty approach, working class parents were assumed to be less involved in the education of their children because they placed less of an emphasis on the importance of schooling. The institutional method allocates responsibility for the differences in parental involvement to the institutions; particularly, school staff may show a lower inclination to involve the parents of working-class children either due to a lack of ability to do so or due to discrimination (Becker and Epstein, 1982). In the cultural capital approach favoured by Lareau (1987), schools are considered to be primarily middle class institutions with middle class values and forms of communications and thus it is children from the middle classes that are best equipped to benefit from education, while their parents are more ready to participate, and become involved in, school life. McNeal’s (1999) research using the cultural capital framework suggested that the framework did partially explain schooling outcomes. The children of parents who showed greater parental involvement in their school life tended to have better behavioural outcomes (lower truancy or dropping out rates) from school. This work did not find, however, that there was a significant relationship between parental involvement and cognitive outcomes (science achievement scores). Nevertheless, McNeal’s (1999) research suggested that social class provided parents with some measure of ‘social and cultural capital’ that would enhance the effect of parental involvement of children, particularly those in the upper classes. Social capital both from the family and the community, including parental involvement, has also been shown to result in better educational outcomes in the English context (Rothon et al, 2012).
While the previously cited studies suggest that social class may be important in determining parental involvement, which is related to better outcomes in education, it is nevertheless necessary to consider the case of the UK specifically. This is motivated by Green’s (1990) survey of educational systems who found that England provided the most vivid example of the way in which schooling was used by a dominant social class to gain ascendancy over other social classes. Reay (2006) argued that this had not changed even into the 21st century, citing data from the ONS that showed that the educational gap between the classes had widened over the preceding decade, with the middle class increasingly showing higher credentials while the proportion of working class adults with no educational qualifications had remained constant. More recent evidence examining the relationship between social class and education after the introduction of tuition fees in the UK, Wilkins et al (2013) suggests that the gap may be widening as the introduction of tuition fees also introduces significant financial stress on working class students.
It should also be noted that there is a direct relationship between parental social class and teaching methodologies used in schools for the children from different socio-economic classes which may affect schooling outcomes independent of the level of parental involvement. Anyon’s (1980) seminal comparative study on the differences of curriculum knowledge and classroom experiences in schools for different US socio-economic classes starkly highlighted the considerable differences between them and contributed to the hypothesis that there is a ‘hidden curriculum’ in school work. Thus, schools with children from working class backgrounds tended to have poor availability of resources and teaching in those schools tended to be mechanical, involving rote recital of facts and little student autonomy. In contrast, schools with children from elite executive backgrounds had excellent resources and teaching that was of top academic quality to teach students to conceptualise rules and to apply these rules to problem solving. In effect, the most affluent students were taught to excel in preparation for adult life. The implications of these stylised facts will be clear in the first part of the next section of this essay examines further how education levels have a direct influence on employment opportunities.
The problem with identifying the relationship between social class, education, and employment opportunities is one of endogeneity; in effect, it is difficult to determine the relationship between social class and employment opportunities when there may be a direct relationship between social class and employment opportunities and the indirect effect of social class on education which affects employment opportunities. This section of the essay will attempt to differentiate between the two effects in an inquiry into the role that social class plays on employment opportunities in the 21st century.
The direct link between education levels and educational opportunities has been examined extensively in the literature. The research documents the ‘returns to education’ as the additional earnings that can be obtained through the employment opportunities that are made available as a result of higher education levels. One examination of this is the study of Zhang et al (2002) on China who found that Chinese individuals in rural areas who had higher levels of education had higher wages in off-farm jobs. This was related to their ability to access jobs that required these higher skills. As China entered its rapid development phase, Zhang et al (2002) found that these returns to education increased which was consistent with the hypothesis that more developed countries tended to have greater opportunities for employment at higher remuneration levels which could be captured by individuals with higher education levels.
The evidence suggests that the increasing returns to education are not limited to developing countries. Autor (2011) explained that the labour market in the US had been polarising with an increase in the number of high wage jobs that demand correspondingly higher skills and lower skilled jobs that command lower wages, and a decrease in the middle income jobs. The implication of this finding in the US is that the returns to education can be substantially higher for those individuals that have the high education levels to obtain the higher wage jobs. However, the effect of this increasing polarisation has been that the individuals with middle education levels and middling skills have been disproportionately “punished” in the recession as these jobs were eliminated. Further, the international integration of labour markets meant that the lowly skilled workers would face greater competition from individuals in lower wage countries, which exerts a downward pressure on the wages in this segment of the labour market. In the UK, Elias and Purcell (2004) showed that there was an increase in the proportion of university graduates in most job market niches in the UK from 1990 to 2000, suggesting an increase in returns to education.
As a result of these findings, it is likely that there is a positive, and increasingly important, link between educational levels and employment opportunities. The previous section of the essay has established that there is a positive relationship between social class and educational levels. However, it needs to be asked whether social class directly affects employment opportunities. There is some evidence that this is the case. Borrowing from the social or cultural capital approach such as the one used by Lareau (1987) in explaining differences in parental involvement in education, McDonald (2011) found evidence that suggested that the social capital resources available to white and male people in the US allowed them to receive twice as many job leads as people in female or minority networks. This suggests a link between social capital and employment opportunities in the US. Further, it should be noted that similar evidence has been shown in previous research (Saloner, 1985; Green et al,1999) which implies that the positive effect that social capital has on employment opportunities, and the presence of a “white male premium”, is persistent over time.
The report on the UK by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (2015) found that there was a significant relationship between social class and access to elite professions and jobs. Some indicators of social class were significantly related to greater access to elite professions. Accent and language style, for instance, has long been established as an indicator of social class (Giles and Sassoon, 1983). In turn, the perceived social class of an individual has an influence on society’s perceptions of the individual’s personal characteristics (Giles and Sassoon, 1983).
Thus, in the words of the Commission:
… a degree from an elite university acts as a signal for quality, but other characteristics such as personal style, accent and mannerisms, adaptability, team working and other ‘soft skills’ are then interpreted as proxies for ‘talent’. (pp. 24-25).
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (2015) also cited research that these “soft skills” could be mapped to socio-economic backgrounds which reinforces the idea that they are social class indicators.
The Commission also highlighted that at least some of these may have arisen due to the fact that the promise of the higher value jobs as a result of technological development has not materialised in the UK. There is thus a limited supply of the high quality and high wage jobs for an increasing number of people with higher education qualifications and, as a result, there is an increasing struggle for the elite colleges and universities that are seen as a way to gain access to these jobs (Brown et al, 2004). Given these circumstances, graduates from the middle or higher classes, are likely to deploy whatever social capital they possess to obtain a relative advantage in the labour market when compared with their peers who do not possess a similar social capital advantage (Abel, 2005).
The Commission’s position on the role of social class in determining employment opportunities in the UK is unequivocal. It appears that the Commission felt that “social class, however defined, apparently remains a strong determinant of one’s ability to access the elite professions and once there, to thrive.” (p. 72). Perhaps a more problematic finding by the Commission was that “within elite firms, awareness of the role played by social background in relation to career progression is quite low, especially compared to other diversity axes such as gender.” (p. 72).
The relationships between social class, education, and employment opportunities have been examined extensively over time. Academics, policy makers, and politicians have generally acknowledged that there are socioeconomic inequalities in terms of education and employment opportunities and have usually paid some lip service towards reducing the access gap between the social classes. This gap has traditionally been large; thus, students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds have been able to benefit from better school resources and teaching styles that provide them with the critical thinking abilities best suited to excel in life, giving them a comparative advantage over students from poorer backgrounds. The existence of a high, and growing, return to education means that these individuals with higher educational credentials have access to better employment opportunities (Elias & Purcell, 2004).
This essay has found that efforts to diminish the relationship between social class and employment opportunities have not been entirely successful in the UK. The number of highly paid jobs that require substantial skills has not increased as much as promised and there is thus intense competition for the elite professions. As a result, individuals who have considerable social capital are likely to deploy their social capital to gain a comparative advantage over other individuals in the employment market. This suggests that individuals who have the “right” social class indicators, even those measured in inaccurate heuristics such as the “right accent” or an appropriate “personal style”, are able to gain an advantage in access to elite employment opportunities.
Based on these findings, this writer concludes in the affirmative to the question posed and that it is most likely the case that social class is still the most important predictor of employment opportunities in 2016, at least in the case of the UK.