"With a Little Help from My Friends": Social Resources as an Explanation of Occupational Status and Income in West Germany, The Netherlands, and the United States

Abstract

This paper gives a cross-national comparison, involving West German, Dutch, and United States data, on the use of social ties in the job-search process. Data for West Germany and the Netherlands are compared with the Lin et al. research on Albany-Schenectady and Troy. The findings show that (1) there is more use of informal sources in the U.S. than in West Germany and the Netherlands; (2) informal sources do not generally lead to higher occupational prestige and income; (3) for the Dutch data (no West German data are available for this question) greater social resources, that is, a contact person with relatively high prestige, do lead to a job with a higher prestige, though effects are less pronounced than found by Lin et al.; and (4) an extension of the Lin et al. analysis shows that these social resources do not have a significant impact on income. This last finding is consistent with the recent results of Marsden and Hurlbert's analysis of Detroit Area Study data. Institutional differences that might be relevant to the explanation of cross-national differences are discussed.