The Location of Nonstandard Employment in Intergenerational Mobility Regime

Abstract

     In this paper, we explored the intergenerational mobility pattern of nonstandard employment. Three hypotheses were considered. Firstly, according to previous research, nonstandard-employment jobs are extraordinarily diverse: some are highly waged and others are underemployed. Therefore, we assumed that the mobility pattern of nonstandard employment also would be diverse; some would come from lower class origin and others would come from higher class origin. This is called diversity hypothesis. Secondly, nonstandard employees might have a lower class origin than standard employees do, because nonstandard employees′ working conditions are relatively low. This is called low-class-origin hypothesis. Thirdly, those coming from nonstandard employment origin would attain to a lower class destination, because its income is low. This is called reproduction hypothesis. To test the three hypotheses, we revised the SSM general occupational classification; “nonstandard professional”, “nonstandard whitecollar” and “nonstandard bluecollar” were added to the SSM classification scheme for class destination, and nonstandard/ jobless and “no father” were added to the SSM scheme for class origin. We made two “age by class origin by class destination” tables for both sexes, after merging seven datasets: JGSS 2000.2003, 2005, 2006, and SSM2005. Quasi-independence and RC(II) models were applied to the tables to describe their mobility regime. The results supported the diversity hypothesis; the nonstandard professionals came from higher class origin but the nonstandard bluecollars came from lower class origin. Although the low-class-origin hypothesis were falsified, the reproduction hypothesis was partially supported. Nonstandard-employment class origin lowered one′s class destination, while it had no association with nonstandard-employment class destination.