ABSTRACT
The Netherlands provides an interesting testing ground for this issue, because the Netherlands has an occupational labour market rather than a flexible (or an internal) labour market like that of the United Kingdom (Marsden 1986; Brown, Green, and Lauder 2001; Gangl 2001). In the Netherlands, there are many (field-specific) vocational tracks. The curricula of these vocational tracks supply students with (field-specific) skills required for particular jobs. This obviously reduces training costs for employers. Within this institutional context, it is therefore expected that field of study has a more important signalling function than in countries with less extensive systems of vocational training and more on-the-job training. In the Netherlands, children may especially benefit from parents who studied in the same field as these parents may provide crucial information about how labour markets (in this field) work and what are important skills for these types of jobs. In addition, parents who are symmetric with their offspring in field of study are more likely to have relevant social capital, thereby facilitating the school-to-work transition and early career job changes to obtain a better occupational position.
