ABSTRACT In recent years, multidimensional conceptualizations of social origin have become increasingsly common in social stratification research. We provide evidence on the associations between four origin measures, parents’ class, status, earnings and education on the one hand and the corresponding offspring measures on the other. We also extend previous research on differences in origin effects at different levels of the children's educational attainment and compare the predictive power of the social origin measures with regard to children's top and bottom attainments on all outcome variables. We use Norwegian administrative data for nearly 500,000 individuals born between 1961 and 1970. The analyses show that parents’ education is a much stronger predictor for all outcomes than are their social class and status positions – both taken separately and together. Parental education also outperforms parents’ earnings, except when the offspring variable is also earnings. Thus, parents’ premarket characteristics seem to be more important than their labour market achievements for their children's outcomes. A second major finding is that the predictive power of social origins is often quite similar for advantaged and disadvantaged outcomes. However, bottom earnings are much less strongly associated with social origins than are top earnings.

ABSTRACT We analyse the effects of immigrant concentration on two measures of native students’ outcomes in upper secondary schools in Norway, completion and exam grades. Administrative data for full cohorts of new students 2002–2008 are employed. To take into account potential selection effects, we rely mainly on models with fixed school and educational programme effects. The analyses present a consistent picture: Immigrant concentration seems to have no effect on either school completion or grades. Sensitivity analyses provide further evidence that these results hold across subsamples and when various methodological problems are addressed. Our results do not lend support to policies aimed to redistribute immigrants’ students more evenly across schools.

ABSTRACT Previous research has yielded quite varying results with regard to the relationship between children and women's sickness absence from work. This study examines the issue using data from the EU Labour Surveys. Cross-sectional data from 2005 covering 23 EU countries plus Norway are used. The data are analysed by means of logistic regression with control for country, age, working hours and socio-economic status. For married/cohabiting women, there is a quite consistent tendency for dependent children to be associated with lower sickness absence. A single young child is, however, related to higher sickness absence in some analyses, suggesting that the transition to parenthood may be stressful. Single mothers do not in general have higher sickness absence than their married/cohabiting counterparts. The tendency toward lower sickness absence in most groups of married/cohabiting mothers is likely to be due to selection to some extent, but also to favourable role accumulation effects.

ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, inequalities in earnings among men have risen in many countries. In the same period, married women's labour force participation has increased. This may affect inequality in household earnings in three ways, related to (a) the degree of inequality in women's earnings, (b) the share of women's earnings of total household earnings, and (c) the correlation of wife's and husband's earnings. Using Annual Norwegian Labour Force Surveys 1974–2004, with added register data on earnings, we find an equalizing effect of wives' earnings over time. Empirical analysis and simulations of hypothetical developments in household earnings inequality show that women's labour supply is the main explanation for these trends.