Cross‐Generation Correlations of Union Status for Young People in Britain
| Published date | 01 September 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8543.00279 |
| Date | 01 September 2003 |
| Author | Jo Blanden,Stephen Machin |
Cross-Generation Correlations of
Union Status for Young People in Britain
Jo Blanden and Stephen Machin
Abstract
This paper investigates whether young people whose fathers are union members
are themselves more likely to join a union.We find that young people with union-
ized fathers are twice as likely to be unionized as those with non-union fathers;
this rises to three times higher for those whose fathers are active in the union.
This supports the idea that socialization within the family plays a role in encour-
aging union membership. It is not the case that the cross-generation correla-
tions we observe are driven by common within-family characteristics (like
occupation, industry and political persuasion) that are strongly related to union
membership.
1. Introduction
There is by now a very large academic literature on connections between indi-
viduals’ economic or social success and the economic or social position of
their parents. Much of this work shows strong links between the social class,
labour market earnings, educational achievement and family income of
parents and their offspring. As a result this research has featured prominently
in political and academic discussions about equality of opportunity and
social mobility.
In this paper we apply the intergenerational transmissions approach to a
different area, one that, to our knowledge, has had little or no consideration
before.We look at patterns of unionization of young people and their fathers
to see if we can uncover any intergenerational persistence in union-joining
behaviour. One can think of a number of reasons why one might expect to
uncover such a link. For example, growing up in a family where the one or
more parents was active in a trade union and passed on knowledge of the
positive aspects of unions to their children might shape children’s atti-
tudes to unions and, in turn, influence their likelihood of joining a union.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
41:3 September 2003 0007–1080 pp. 391–415
Jo Blanden and Stephen Machin are at the Department of Economics, University College
London, and the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Alternatively, it could be that just knowing that unions exist because parents
were members is enough to increase the probability that a young person will
become a member.
Our focus on young people is due to the nature of data available on the
union status of people and their parents. This is because we are only able to
find out about the union status of two generations from household surveys
from which (for at least some periods of our analysis) we have to match
parents and children living in the same household. However, establishing the
existence of cross-generation correlations between young people and their
parents is important for obtaining a good understanding of the reasons why
young people join (or do not join) trade unions. It has become very impor-
tant for unions to improve this understanding in recent years, given the back-
drop of the sharp decline in unionization since the late 1970s (Machin 2000,
2003). Of course, the cross-generation question and its connection to parental
socialization form only one part, albeit a largely unstudied part,of the union-
joining question for young people. But the study of all aspects of what it is
that shapes and influences young people’s unionization rates has become all
the more important given the particularly low current levels of union mem-
bership among the young. This is a feature not only of the country we study
(Britain) but also of other countries (notably the United States) where union
decline has been pervasive.
In this paper we present evidence showing that young people are signifi-
cantly more likely to be unionized if their fathers are unionized. Importantly,
for the parental socialization thesis, we find even stronger connections where
fathers report themselves as being active in their trade unions.
Furthermore, our findings show that the significant correlation between
union membership of young people and their parents is not driven by
common factors that cause people to join a union. We consider several
possible common factors, drawing on what have become cited by some
researchers as empirical regularities in the large literature on who joins unions
(see e.g. Bain and Elias 1985, Booth 1986, 1995; Farber 1983). These include
firm size, occupation, industry, whether one works in the public sector, and
political preference. Controlling for these attributes for both young people
and their parents (and specifically for their cross-generation persistence) does
dampen down the link between the union status of young people and parental
union status, but a significant correlation remains. On the basis of this, it
seems hard to attribute the existence of an intergenerational link in union
status to cross-generation commonalities in measured characteristics cor-
related with union membership.
Empirical social science researchers have not, to our knowledge, addressed
the question of cross-generation correlations in actual union status, although
there has been some related work in political science looking at cross-
generation correlations of political values (Dalton 1980; Jennings and Niemi
1968). These studies focus particular attention on the influence of parents in
the formative years and on how the process of parental socialization has long-
lasting effects on views of their offspring throughout the life cycle. There are
392 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003.
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