Social mobility in an era of growing education: territorial perspectives

We analyze the consequences of the increased education levels by adopting a gender perspective. In particular, assuming labour market insertion as a former requirement for social mobility and protection from adverse events in the life course, we try to answer the question: “gender equality in educational attainments leads to better employment perspectives for women? Those perspectives are measured by gender gap and sectorial segregation. Again, in an era of educational expansion it is the higher levels of education that count most for individual’s success in the economy. We study three countries and their regions, Italy, United Kingdom, and Sweden, representing three different welfare regimes, more or less sensitive to women employment (work-life balance policies and policies promoting women employment), and different institutional frameworks with different labor institutions and regulations. We use the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) which are very useful for our purposes as the survey is conducted in (almost) all Member States of the European Union by using the same concepts and definitions (harmonized methodology): this allows economic sounds comparisons between the countries of interest. We examine the changing patterns of educational inequalities between countries/regions by comparing the trend of key demographic-economic indicators, especially those related to educational attainment (literacy rate, enrolments in primary, secondary and tertiary education). We estimate the role of various aspects of social origin, i.e. father’s education and occupation, family size, on the educational attainment by estimating OLS regressions. This gives insights on the persistence of educational inequalities and on the role of social strata. Our results also help understanding the relevant and negative impact of gender inequalities on the local economic development. On this basis, the paper discusses the policies implications to foster gender equality in the labour market as in society as a whole. In detail, whether successful (and therefore taken as best practices), the policies implemented in some countries/regions might be adopted as well in less efficient countries/regions.