The Class Gap in Career Progression: Evidence From U.S. Academia
中文摘要
与性别或种族不同，阶层背景很少成为职业晋升研究或精英职业中DEI（多元、公平与包容）工作的关注重点。它应当受到关注吗？本文以父母教育作为阶层背景的代理变量，记录了一个职业领域——美国终身教职轨道学术界——在职业晋升中存在的巨大阶层差距。与来自同一院校和领域、父母拥有非博士研究生学位的前博士同学相比，第一代大学毕业生在R1机构获得终身教职的可能性低10%，获得终身教职的机构排名低11%，收入低3%，工作满意度低5%。退出学术界的选择性效应和不同的偏好均不能解释这一差距；研究生产率差异所起的作用也很小。相反，可能的驱动因素是文化资本和社会资本的差异。我们还发现，在产业界工作的博士同样存在职业晋升中的阶层差距，这表明该现象在学术界之外也具有普遍性。
Abstract
Unlike gender or race, class background is rarely a focus of research on career progression, or of DEI efforts in elite occupations. Should it be? In this paper, we document a large class gap in career progression in one occupation—U.S. tenure‐track academia—using parental education to proxy for class background. First‐generation college graduates are 10% less likely to be tenured at an R1, are tenured at institutions ranked 11% lower, earn 3% less, and report 5% lower job satisfaction, than their former PhD classmates (from the same institution and field) with a parent with a non‐PhD graduate degree. Neither selection out of academia nor different preferences explain this gap; differential research productivity also plays little role. Instead, likely drivers are differences in cultural and social capital. We also find a class gap in career progression for PhDs who work in industry, suggesting this phenomenon generalizes outside academia.