Ricerc@Sapienza

Following the literature on micro-classes that states that mechanisms of social immobility are related to specific features of each occupational group, we will focus on top occupations - namely, liberal professionals and politicians - and assess the Italian case, also through international comparisons, with three aims:
i) inquiring whether those coming a better background, especially children of parents who performed their same job, are more likely to achieve these top occupations;
ii) observing whether, within the small subgroup of advantaged individuals performing top jobs, those coming from a better background are further advantaged by higher earnings;
iii) exploiting changes in professionals' earnings after liberalizations or institutional changes, to identify whether earnings differences within top groups depend on unobservable abilities background related or are also affected by the social ties, i.e. by nepotism, thus questioning markets efficiency over the absence of effective equality of opportunity.
On these issues, the current literature has two major limits: i) it focuses on the achievement of prestigious jobs (on belonging to various micro-classes), without inquiring whether "within prestigious jobs" earnings gaps benefitting those coming from a better background emerge; ii) it is not able to identify sources of possible earnings gaps background-related, i.e. if they depend on informal transmission of human capital from parents to children or on social connections. We will clearly advance with respect to both issues, investigating earnings gaps background-related within individuals performing top jobs and identifying the source of these possible gaps for some workers¿ subgroups (i.e., lawyers and politicians), thus distinguishing effects due to background-related abilities or to social connections. Furthermore, new empirical evidence about social immobility and intergenerational inequality in Italy and major developed countries will be provided.