THE DIRECT EFFECT OF SOCIAL ORIGIN. A SCOPING REVIEW AND TWO COMPARATIVE ANALYSES

The work examines the Direct Effect of Social Origin (DESO), i.e. the intergenerational transmission of occupational status independent of individual education, or human capital. Building on the Blau-Duncan (1967) framework, foundational to current social stratification research, this work addresses persistent questions about why modern societies, despite meritocratic sorting systems, continue to exhibit substantial inequality of opportunity rooted in social origin. The dissertation includes three chapters, aiming at systematizing existing knowledge, describing cross-national patterns, and investigate the possible mechanisms underlying this aspect of social stratification. Chapter one presents a scoping review of sixty years of quantitative research on DESO, documenting theoretical developments, methodological evolutions, geographical scope, and empirical operationalizations that have shaped the field. The second chapter adopts a descriptive, macro-level approach to analyse cross-country variations in DESO across more than twenty European countries spanning over eighty years, examining how macro-level factors are associated with class differentials in opportunity structures and their evolution over time. The third chapter employs panel data from four countries (United States, Russia, Switzerland, and Germany) to assess the life-course patterns of the DESO in comparative perspective, accounting for individual random effects and (possibly) shedding light on the possible mechanisms that generate unequal outcomes across social backgrounds. By integrating systematic knowledge consolidation, extensive cross-national description, and longitudinal analysis, this dissertation contributes to the longstanding debate on meritocracy versus social reproduction, advancing understanding of the mechanisms, patterns, and determinants of intergenerational inequality in status attainment in contemporary societies.