The Class Gap in Career Progression: Evidence From U.S. Academia

IF 6.2 1区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Econometrica Pub Date : 2026-07-29 DOI:10.3982/ECTA23358

Anna Stansbury, Kyra Rodriguez

引用次数: 0

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.

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职业发展中的阶级差距：来自美国学术界的证据

与性别或种族不同，阶级背景很少是职业发展研究的重点，也很少是精英职业中DEI努力的重点。应该吗？在本文中，我们记录了一个职业在职业发展上的巨大阶级差距。终身教职——用父母教育代替班级背景。与父母没有博士学位的前博士同学（来自同一机构和领域）相比，第一代大学毕业生在R1获得终身职位的可能性低10%，在排名低11%的机构获得终身职位，收入低3%，工作满意度低5%。学术界的选择和不同的偏好都不能解释这种差距；差异研究生产力的作用也不大。相反，可能的驱动因素是文化和社会资本的差异。我们还发现，在工业界工作的博士在职业发展方面存在阶级差距，这表明这种现象在学术界之外也普遍存在。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Econometrica 社会科学-数学跨学科应用

CiteScore

11.00

自引率

3.30%

发文量

审稿时长

6-12 weeks

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