Yaojun Li

This paper investigates the patterns and trends in higher education in Britain over the last five decades (1972–2025). Drawing on most authoritative national representative data, we examine class, gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment, focusing on access to higher education. The analysis is situated within major sociological debates on education, particularly modernisation theory and rational action theory, which respectively anticipate declining and persistent class differences in educational attainment. The findings indicate widening class differences, a reversal of gender differences, and substantial ethnic variation. This paper then considers the extent to which these findings converge with, or depart from, the existing literature. A central feature of prevailing theories of educational attainment is their emphasis on class-lined inequalities in family income; there is strong evidence that income inequality between classes in Britain has widened over the past 50 years. This growing income gap closely mirrors the class gap in higher education. Building on the most systematic research, the present analysis extends and enriches the stratification tradition in the study of higher education in Britain, both conceptually and empirically.

This paper analyses the socio-economic disadvantages of women from different ethnic minority heritages in the UK. Using data from the Labour Force Survey (2014–2023), which contains detailed information on parental class and respondents’ socio-economic conditions, we examine four domains of life chances which are crucial for ethnic integration: educational attainment at the degree level, risks of unemployment, access to professional-managerial (salariat) position and earning power. We proceeded with the gross differences and then examined the differences by ethno-gender status and parental class combinations, controlling for many confounding factors. We also examined the net ethno-gender differences over the life course and the trends of social fluidity over the period covered and across the ethno-gender groups. We found that women from all ethnic origins were doing well in education but faced multiple disadvantages in the labour market, especially in access to the salariat and in earning power. Women of Pakistani/Bangladeshi heritages faced pronounced unemployment risks, especially at the earlier life stages. There is a significant increase in fluidity over the period covered, but this is marked by considerable ethnic and class differences, with Black Caribbean, Black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women from more advantaged class origins being unable to secure advantaged class positions and those from working-class families unable to make long-range upward mobility as effectively as White men. Overall, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Black African and Black Caribbean women are found to be considerably disadvantaged, but there are also signs of social progress.

This chapter summarises the research on intergenerational social class mobility. The chapter begins with a brief history of sociological research on occupational mobility. It then discusses conceptual issues related, first, to the classification of occupations into classes or hierarchies, and second, to the distinction between absolute and relative mobility. Some of the major theories, research findings and controversies with respect to comparative research on occupational mobility are then reviewed as well as trends over time. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of priorities for future research, including more within-country studies that aim to uncover underlying mechanisms.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold damage to the socio-economic lives of people all over the world. Research has also demonstrated great inequality in the pandemic experience. In the UK as in many other countries, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and in working-class positions have suffered disproportionately more than the majority group and those in salariat positions in terms of income loss, financial difficulty, and vulnerability to infection. Yet little is known about how people coped in the daily lives and tried to maintain their well-being during the most difficult days of the pandemic through social capital.Methods: In this paper, we draw data from the COVID-19 Survey in Five National Longitudinal Studies to address these questions. The survey covered the period from May 2020 to February 2021, the height of the pandemic in the UK. It contains numerous questions on contact, help and support among family, friends, community members, socio-political trust, and physical and mental health. We conceptualise three types of social capital and one type of overall well-being and we construct latent variables from categorical indicator variables. We analyse the ethnic and socio-economic determinants of the three types of social capital and their impacts on well-being.Results: Our analysis shows that social capital plays very important roles on well-being, and that ethnic minority groups, particularly those of Pakistani/Bangladeshi and Black heritages, faced multiple disadvantages: their poorer socio-economic positions prevented them from gaining similar levels of social capital to those of the white group. However, for people with the same levels of social capital, the effects on well-being are generally similar.Discussion: Socio-economic (class) inequality is the root cause for ethnic differences in social capital which in turn affects people’s well-being.

In recent years, improving work autonomy as an important priority in the UK labour market has been shown to enhance employee mental health and well-being. However, previous theories and empirical studies have paid little attention to the intersectional inequalities in the mental health benefits of work autonomy, preventing us from gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mental consequences of work autonomy. By integrating literature from occupational psychology, gender and social class, this study develops theoretical hypotheses regarding whether and how the mental health benefits of work autonomy vary alongside the intersectional axes of gender and occupational class and tests these hypotheses using long-term panel data in the UK (2010–2021). Overall, we find that those from higher occupational class and male employees acquire significantly more mental health benefits from high work autonomy compared with those from lower occupational class and female employees. Moreover, further analyses show significant intersectional inequalities of gender and occupational class. While male employees from all occupational classes gain significant mental health benefits from work autonomy, only female employees from higher (but not lower) occupational classes benefit from work autonomy. These findings contribute to the literature in the sociology of work by demonstrating the intersectional inequalities in mental health consequences of work autonomy, especially for women in the lower occupational class, highlighting the need for a more gender- and occupation-sensitive design in future labour market policies.

Ever since its foundation by the Romans in the first century AD, London has been distinct from other cities within the UK politically, commercially, and socio-culturally, reaching its apogee in the mid-nineteenth century but recreating itself anew in the late twentieth century. Migration has played a major role in this story ever since its foundation, both with internal migration from other parts of the British Isles and with international migration especially from other parts of the Roman and subsequently British empires. In the post-war period, this migration helped revive the inner city and contributed to the emergence of a cosmopolitan political culture. However, this cosmopolitan culture coexists alongside continuing racism and inequality.

This study examines the intergenerational transmission of family resources (class, education and income) on people’s educational and occupational attainment in their early career life. It asks whether parental resources remain effective or fall into insignificance. It also asks whether the resources operate in a similar way for the ethnic minorities as for the majority. Drawing on data from the Longitudinal Study of Young Persons in England, the study focuses on resource transmission in degree attainment, access to elite class position, unemployment rates, labour market earnings, and continuous income. In each aspect, we test not only the net effects of parental resources, but also the differential transmission between the majority and ethnic minority groups. The analysis shows strong effects of parental resources on educational and occupational attainment for whites but rather weak effects for the ethnic minorities. Ethnic minority children tend to grow up in poor families, yet even those whose parents manage to achieve socio-economic parity with whites do not enjoy similar benefits. Reducing inequality in family socio-economic conditions and inequality in labour market opportunities is key to achieving social justice.

Research in social stratification tends to focus on class differences in educational and occupational attainment, with particular attention to primary and secondary effects in the former, and class reproduction in the latter, domain. Research in ethnic studies tends to focus, however, on ethnic penalty or premium. Many studies have been conducted in each tradition on specific issues but little research is available that examines class, gender and ethnic effects simultaneously or in tandem with contextual effects, let alone on the whole trajectory from compulsory schooling, through further and higher education, to labor market position. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, this paper shows pronounced class differences but remarkable gender progress in each of the educational domains. With regard to ethnicity, people from minority ethnic heritages had lower GCSE scores due to poorer family conditions but achieved higher transition rates to A-Level study, higher university enrollment and, for some groups, greater attendance at elite universities, resulting in an overall higher rate of degree-level attainment than did whites. One might expect members of ethnic minority backgrounds to fare equally well in their earlier careers in the labor market, but only to find them more vulnerable to unemployment, less likely to have earnings, and more disadvantaged in terms of disposable incomes.

This article examines the effects of China’s household registration (hukou) system, which divides the population into rural and urban sectors with differential benefits and entitlements, on the link between intergenerational social mobility and people’s well-being. Using China General Social Surveys of 2005 and 2011, we find that upward mobility has a similarly positive effect in the urban and the rural sectors but downward mobility has a markedly negative effect chiefly in the rural sector. We propose a thesis of ‘asymmetrical permeability’ to account for the findings. In the context of rapid economic development and staggering institutional reform, the upwardly mobile in both sectors enjoy ample socio-economic resources as provided by the advantaged destination classes whereas the downwardly mobile depend very much on the hukou status they have. In the urban but not rural sector, families in advantaged positions are able to protect the downwardly mobile offspring in their well-being. It is therefore the differences in the hukou system that explain the differential acculturation.