Social Science & Medicine, Volume 190, pp. 207-216. doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.08.022 Abstract Social capital research has recognized the relevance of occupational network contacts for individ

Child Development Abstract Immigrant background and disadvantaged socioeconomic background are two key predictors of poorer school achievement in Europe. However, the former is associated with higher wh

Michael Osborne, Exeter College, Oxford. We examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, we begin by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisat

European Sociological ReviewFull text Abstract Scholars have documented ethnic and gender discrimination across labour markets since the 1970s by using field experiments (correspondence tests) in which

in: European Sociological Review, Volume 36, Issue 4 AbstractWe ask if school choice, through its effect on sorting across schools, affects high school graduates’ application decisions to higher educatof higher educational programs applied for. Low achievers increased their propensity to apply for the ‘low-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to less prestigious, less well-paid occupations, and high achievers increased their propensity to apply for ‘high-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to more prestigious, well-paid occupations. The results suggest that increased sorting across schools reinforces differences across schools and groups in ‘cultures of ambition’. Although these effects translate into relatively small increases in the gender gap, the immigration gap, and the parental education gap in educational choice, our results indicate that school choice, and the increased sorting it leads to, through conformity mechanisms in schools polarizes educational choices of students across achievement groups.

Social Science Research, vol. 98 Abstract Advanced labor markets are typically stratified by origin with a majority ethnic group occupying more desirable (high-skilled) positions and subordinated ethnic choices reinforce these patterns. This would be the case if employers were more reluctant to hire subordinate minority job applicants for high-skilled positions than for low-skilled occupations. We use experimental correspondence audit data derived from 6407 job applications sent to job openings in the Swedish labor market, where the ‘foreignness’ of the job applicants has been randomly assigned to otherwise equally merited job applications. We find that negative discrimination of job applicants with ‘foreign’ names is very similar in the high-skilled and low-skilled segments of the labor market. There is no significant relative ethnic difference in chances of callbacks by skill level. Because baseline callback rates are higher in high-skilled occupations, discrimination however translates into a significantly larger percentage unit callback difference between ‘natives’ and ‘foreigners’ in these occupations, in particular between male job applicants. That is, the 

European Sociological Review 31: 312-25. Abstract We study the biases that arise in estimates of social inequalities in children’s cognitive ability test scores due to (i) children’s misreporting of soci

Sociological Science 3:39-60. 10.15195/v3.a3. Abstract It is often pointed out that conclusions about intergenerational (parent–child) mobility can differ depending on whether we base them on studies of c

Within which occupations is discrimination of applicants by ethnicity more common? We examine differences in discrimination and seek knowledge about what mechanisms lie behind this.

Gunn Birkelund: Gender discrimination in hiring

Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, PhD in Sociology is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo (since 1999). Her main publications cover labour marke