Blackwell Reference Online

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Research on the transition from school to work focuses on the relationship between the level of education and the first job achieved upon entry into the labor market. This has traditionally been a central topic in social stratification and social mobility research. As such, the study of the transition from school to work has reflected the main theoretical positions that have dominated research on social stratification since the end of World War II. Under the influence of functionalist theory, the relationship between education and the first job has been studied in terms of the classical achievement/ascription dichotomy. Thus, scholars were mainly interested in establishing the relative weights of achieved and ascribed factors in the process of status achievement, in particular with regard to the first job. The key research question was whether or not access to better jobs was increasingly dependent on achieved factors, such as education, and less and less dependent on ascribed factors such as the characteristics of the family of origin. In the same period, economists developed the theory of human capital, which assumes that formal education increases individual productivity by providing the skills and knowledge required for the most demanding occupations. According to this theory, individuals can improve their productivity by investing in their own education. Moreover, employers ... log in or subscribe to read full text