| Abstract: | Educational attainment and gender are firmly established in the labour economics literature as key determinants of an individual's economic standing at a given point in time. The concern of the present paper is to determine the impact of these characteristics on economic progress over time. A multinomial logit approach to estimating occupational attainment at various career points is employed. The use of this method of analysis in conjunction with the intertemporal linking of occupations enables us to provide a number of important insights into economic progress in the Australian labour market. Additional years of education are shown to increase the probability of employment in better jobs at the time of labour market entry and also to enhance career mobility. Analysis of male-female differences highlights the sizeable gap between the occupational distributions of these groups. Part of this difference may reflect inequality of opportunity between males and females in the Australian labour market. |
