IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v26y2012i6p987-1006.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethnic penalties in graduate level over-education, unemployment and wages: evidence from Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Rafferty

Abstract

Although access to higher education has helped many minority ethnic men and women improve their labour market position compared to prior generations or the less qualified, it remains unclear to what extent higher level qualifications facilitate an equalization of labour market outcomes with comparably educated white UK born men and women. This article critically examines ethnic differences in graduate level over-education, unemployment and wages as potential markers of discrimination or broader ‘ethnic penalties’, defined as the differences in labour market outcomes persisting after accounting for observable human capital and demographic characteristics. To estimate ethnic penalties a novel approach using covariate matching is applied. The findings reveal that despite their levels of educational attainment penalties persist among several minority ethnic groups. The implications of pre-labour market social disadvantages for explaining patterns of over-education are highlighted.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Rafferty, 2012. "Ethnic penalties in graduate level over-education, unemployment and wages: evidence from Britain," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 26(6), pages 987-1006, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:26:y:2012:i:6:p:987-1006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wes.sagepub.com/content/26/6/987.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zwysen, Wouter & Longhi, Simonetta, 2016. "Labour market disadvantage of ethnic minority British graduates: university choice, parental background or neighbourhood?," ISER Working Paper Series 2016-02, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Wouter Zwysen & Neli Demireva, 2018. "An Examination of Ethnic Hierarchies and Returns to Human Capital in the UK," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 6(3), pages 6-33.
    3. Wouter Zwysen & Simonetta Longhi, 2016. "Employment and Earning Gaps in the Early Career of Ethnic Minority British Graduates: the Importance of University Choice, Parental Background and Area Characteristics," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1615, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    4. Gillian Kingston & Frances McGinnity & Philip J. O’Connell, 2013. "Discrimination in the Irish Labour Market: Nationality, Ethnicity and the Recession," Working Papers 201323, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:26:y:2012:i:6:p:987-1006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.