Low education, high job quality? Job autonomy and learning among workers without higher education in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Ireland

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12657359
AutoresTove Mogstad Aspøy (0000-0002-6654-7530, Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research, Oslo, Norway, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume22
Fascículo2
Páginas188-210
Data de publicação2019-09-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEuropean Societies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1461-6696 • E-ISSN: 1469-8307
EditoraRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14616696.2019.1660392
OpenAlexW2973400472
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas26

Most comparative studies of job autonomy and learning opportunities find that workers in Scandinavian countries are better off. Recent studies have challenged these findings, showing low job quality, particularly in the lower private service sector in the Scandinavian countries. The aim of this article is to examine whether the autonomous and learning-intensive working life of Scandinavia also applies to people without higher education. It explores if there is a gap in job autonomy and informal job learning between educational groups, and if this gap varies across the social democratic systems of Sweden, Norway and Denmark on the one hand, and the liberal systems of the United Kingdom and Ireland on the other. Drawing on quantitative micro-data from PIAAC (2011/2012), this article demonstrates that Scandinavians with no education above upper secondary school do experience greater job autonomy than their counterparts in the British Isles. Moreover, the gap between educational groups in terms of job autonomy is smaller in Scandinavia than it is in the liberal systems. Regarding informal learning opportunities, the relative disadvantage among workers without higher education seems to be associated with selection into occupations with few opportunities for informal job learning, in Scandinavia as well as the British Isles

Autonomy · Demographic economics · Disadvantage · Economic growth · Economics · Higher education · Political science · Sociology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Social Policy and Reform Studies