Occupational matching and social stratification - Theoretical insights and empirical observations taken from a German-German comparison

The paper analyses occupational matching as a process of status allocation and a mechanism which maintains or changes the structure of social stratification. By examining the occupational matching process in two political regimes (East and West Germany between 1945 and 1989), we address the following question: is occupational matching based on educational credentials a general allocation mechanism in all meritocratic societies, irrespective of their ideological goals' The empirical analyses are based on the German Life History Study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. The male and female respondents belong to four birth cohorts (1929-31, 1939-41, 1949-51/1951-53, and 1959-61). The descriptive analyses and logistic regressions presented in the paper reveal astonishing similarities, but also remarkable differences between the two regimes.