Research on Gender Differences in Intergenerational Mobility among College Graduates

In recent years, each graduating class has been humorously referred to as encountering the “most challenging job market year”, making it crucial to explore how to promote higher-quality employment for college graduates. This study utilized survey data on the employment status of the 2020 cohort of college graduates and employs statistical description methods to examine the disparity between the occupations of fathers and the initial occupations of graduates empirically. The findings reveal that among graduates whose fathers are in the same occupational class, males have a significantly higher probability of entering privileged social class positions compared to females. Females have a slightly better advantage in entering the middle-tier positions, while both male and female graduates have a relatively low proportion entering the basic job sectors. When analyzing different types of colleges, among graduates whose fathers are in the same occupational class, male graduates have a greater advantage in entering privileged social class positions compared to female graduates. However, the gender disparity in employment is most prominent among graduates from prestigious colleges, followed by general undergraduate institutions, and is smallest among vocational colleges.