By Anthony Heath, Jane Roberts and Dorren McMahon
INTRODUCTION
In this paper our main aims are first to explore the relationship between the education and occupation of ethnic minorities today, and second to compare the results obtained from different sources. Specifically we compare the results obtained using the 1991 Census Samples of Anonyised Record (SARS). With those obtained from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). While the SARS have major advantages - coverage, large sample size - they also have major potential disadvantages.
In general in Britain, the acquisition of educational qualifications has proved to be one of the major ways in which people can reach the more advantaged positions in the class structure (Heath et al 1992). Our interest is in whether ethnic minorities get the same benefits from educational qualifications as do native-born whites.
It is important to distinguish two rather different ways in which ethnic minorities might be disadvantaged in converting qualifications into occupations. First, we might find that, at a given level of education, ethnic minorities have poorer job chances than native-born whites. Second, we might find that for a given increment in education, ethnic minorities obtain a smaller increment in occupational chances than do whites. The concept of differential ethnic 'returns to education' has already been used to refer to the latter concept and in the paper we shall talk of differential ethnic penalties when we refer to the former concept. (In regression terms we can think of this as a distinction between intercepts and slopes.)
There has been comparatively little research on this topic so far in Britain. A number of studies have concentrated on general comparisons between whites and blacks (Mayhew and Rosewell, 1978; McNabb and Psacharapoulos, 1980; Stewart, 1982; Heath and Ridge, 1983; Brennan and McGeevor, 1987). In general these studies have found that an 'ethnic penalty' is incurred by ethnic minorities when competing for jobs with equally-qualified whites (ie a difference in intercept). Thus, blacks with a given level of education tend to have lower occupational attainments between ethnic minorities, with Chinese suffering the smallest ethnic penalty and Gray and Sime, 1992; Cheng and Heath, 1993; Jones, 1993; Cheng 1994). There is relatively little British research on returns to education. Cheng and Heath found evidence that Indians obtained poorer returns than did whites or other ethnic minorities, while Dale and Blackburn (1996) also found ethnic differences in returns to education.
Most of the existing studies have focussed on what we term the 'first generation' members of ethnic minorities, that is people who were born overseas and subsequently migrated to Britain. Many of these people will have completed their education before coming to Britain, and it could well be argued that overseas educational qualifications will not yield the same occupational returns as do British qualifications. It can also be argued that migrants of any ethnic group, particularly if they come from a more rural society, will have greater difficulties than the native-born since they lack the social contacts and the knowledge of how the British labour market works. These non-educational resources may be important in securing the more privileged positions within society and their absence may give an additional handicap to migrants (Heath and Ridge 1983).
The experience of the 'second generation', born and brought up in Britain, with British educational qualifications, and presumably with greater familiarity with the British labour market is therefore particularly interesting. Previous research has been hampered partly by their small sample sizes and partly by the fact that, since much migration to Britain took place in the 1950s and 1960s, few of the second generation had entered the labour market at the time the earlier research was conducted. The 1991 Census gives us the opportunity to look at the experience of ethnic minorities born in this country and Heath and McMahon (1996) report this evidence. However, in the present paper we shall restrict ourselves to analysis of the first generation, since the numbers in the LFS are not sufficient to permit detailed analysis of the second generation.
John Curtice, CREST
University of Strathclyde
Department of Government
16 Richmond Street
Glasgow G1 1XQ United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 141 552 4400 Ext 4223
Fax: +44 141 552 5677
Email:
j.curtice@strath.ac.uk