Social class origin and income variations among degree holders: evidence from Italy

The role of educational fields in the intergenerational transmission of advantage is underexplored. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining the moderating role of fields of study on the first-job earnings of Italian higher education graduates, using stepwise linear regression techniques. Our findings confirm that the effect of social class on first job earnings is stronger in certain fields. We explore three alternative explanations for this interaction effect, including the low signaling of graduates’ potential productivity in “soft” fields; the differential impact of social class across genders combined with the differential concentration of females in some fields; and fields’ degree of stratification in terms of educational achievements, employment and self-employment decisions, and occupational closure. None of these hypotheses receives empirical support, suggesting the need for future research to identify other mechanisms underlying the moderating role of the horizontal dimension of education on the intergenerational transmission of social inequalities.