Educational expansion, occupational upgrading, and the changing structure of education-occupation linkages in Sweden, 1960–2013
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7203203 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xiaojie Xu (0000-0002-4452-1540, Stockholm University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 102 |
| Pages | 101135-101135 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Research in Social Stratification and Mobility (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0276-5624 • E-ISSN: 1878-5654 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.rssm.2026.101135 |
| OpenAlex | W7127437752 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 65 |
Comparative research has shown that education-occupation linkages tend to be weaker in school-based vocational education and training (VET) systems that emphasize general rather than occupation-specific skills, as in the case of Sweden. However, how these linkages have evolved within national skill formation systems remains largely unexplored. Using Swedish register data from 1960 to 2013, this study documents a sharp rise in the overall strength of education-occupation linkage, peaking around 1990, followed by a general decline. The rapid expansion of upper tertiary education and occupational upgrading shifted the educational and occupational composition toward more tightly linked categories. Yet these compositional gains were largely offset by weakening structural linkages at the upper secondary vocational and lower tertiary levels, where ties to specific occupations eroded considerably. In contrast, despite substantial educational expansion, the decline in structural linkage at the upper tertiary level was relatively modest and later showed signs of rebound. These general trends hold across genders, with women benefiting more from occupational upgrading and showing stronger and more stable overall linkage since 1990. Taken together, educational expansion and occupational upgrading appear relatively balanced and have jointly contributed to a closer alignment between the educational system and the occupational structure in Sweden.
Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
Education and Intergenerational Social Mobility in Europe and the United States
Education at a Glance 2013
Social Limits to Growth
Occupational Change in Europe
The Evolution of Gender Gaps in Industrialized Countries
Credentials, Signals, and Screens
The Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market
Explaining Job Polarization
Educational Systems and the Trade-Off between Labor Market Allocation and Equality of Educational Opportunity
Technical Change, Job Tasks, and Rising Educational Demands
Implications of Skill-Biased Technological Change
A Grand Gender Convergence
The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change
A tale of two reforms
Skills and Inequality
On‐the‐job training
Transitions from Education to Work in Europe
Generating Inequality
Lousy and Lovely Jobs
Educational Expansion and Occupational Change
Guarded transitions? Youth trajectories and school-to-work transition policies in Sweden
Upgrading or Polarizing? Gendered Patterns of Change in the Occupational Prestige Hierarchy Between 1997 and 2015
Welfare regimes and change in the employment structure
Coordinated markets, school-to-work linkages, and labor market outcomes in Europe
Using the decomposition of the mutual information index as an alternative approach to the study of educational inequality trends in Spain
Signals and closure by degrees
Mismatch between occupation and schooling
Nya möjligheter för stratifieringsforskning i Sverige
Changing Labour Markets and Early Career Outcomes
Entropy-Based Segregation Indices
Feminization, Ageing, and Occupational Change in Europe in the Last 25 Years
School-to-Work Linkages, Educational Mismatches, and Labor Market Outcomes
Positional Advantages of Higher Education Degrees and Occupational Upgrading in West Germany
Upgrading or polarization? Occupational change in Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, 1990-2008
Closure and matching payoffs from college majors
How Trade Hurt Unskilled Workers
The Gender Revolution
The Polarization Myth
A Method for Studying Differences in Segregation Across Time and Space
Who Is Ahead in the Labor Queue? Institutions' and Employers' Perspective on Overeducation, Undereducation, and Horizontal Mismatches
From school to fitting work
Vocational Training and Career Employment Precariousness in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden
Trends in the Occupational Returns to Educational Credentials in the Dutch Labor Market
Institutional Arrangements and Stratification Processes in Industrial Societies
Educational systems and labor market outcomes
Life Courses in the Globalization Process
Who benefits from school-to-work linkages in the labour market? A comparison between natives, migrants educated abroad, and those educated domestically
Credential Inflation and Decredentialization
School-to-Work Linkages in the United States, Germany, and France
Why Do Some Occupations Pay More than Others? Social Closure and Earnings Inequality in the United States
Does it pay off to specialize? The interplay between educational specificity, level and cyclical sensitivity
Vocational education and employment over the life course using a new measure of occupational specificity
Skill and education effects on earnings in 18 Countries
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |