The Class Pay Gap in Britain and France’s Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations
The Class Pay Gap in Britain and France’s Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations
Photo: Mariano Mantel, City of London (CC BY-NC)
Séminaire scientifique de l'OSC 2015-2016
98, rue de l'Université 75007 Paris - salle Annick Percheron
vendredi 24 juin 2016 de 11h30 à 13h
The Class Pay Gap in Britain and France’s
Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations
The hidden barriers, or ‘gender pay gap’, preventing women from earning equivalent incomes to men is well documented. Yet in this talk we demonstrate that, in Britain and France, there is also a comparable ‘class origin pay gap’ in higher professional and managerial occupations. We find that even when those from working-class backgrounds are successful in entering high-status occupations, they earn considerably less, on average, than those from privileged backgrounds. In Britain this class-origin pay gap translates to up to £7,350 lower annual earnings. This difference is partly explained by the upwardly mobile being employed in smaller firms and working outside London and Paris, but it remains substantial in both countries even net of a variety of important predictors of earnings. These findings illustrate how, even beyond occupational entry, the socially mobile often face a significant and previously undetected earnings “class ceiling” within high-status occupations.
Sam Friedman, Assistant Professor in Sociologie 
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Daniel Laurison, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (LSE)
