While providing equal opportunities to all members of society independent of an individual’s socio-economic background is a major objective of German policy makers, educational opportunities of children with a non-academic family background are still unequally obstructed. When analysing the labour market implications of this disadvantage, social capital as an additional source of inequality often lacks attention. Drawing on the instrumental value of rather loose contacts (i.e. weak ties) on the labour market as revealed by Granovetter (Getting a job. A study of contacts and careers, The University of Chicago Press, Cambridge, 1974), this paper goes beyond the human capital approach and includes a measure of instrumental social capital in the form of weak-tie career support in the earnings function. Applying an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and quantile regressions, we find a significant average wage gap between those with and without an academic family background. A large part can be explained by deficits that those from less educated families incur with respect to human and instrumental social capital: Lower educational attainment accounts for more than half of the wage gap between the two groups while fewer career support explains around five percent of the differential. Additionally, a non-academic family background is associated with a significant deficit in returns to their instrumental social capital along the wage distribution. The findings therefore suggest that inequalities of opportunity on the German labour market occur beyond the education system, as not only the quantity but also the quality of career supporting networks of those from a non-academic family are inferior.

尽管为社会所有成员提供独立于个人社会经济背景的平等机会是德国决策者的主要目标，但非学术家庭背景儿童的教育机会仍然不平等。在分析这种劣势对劳动力市场的影响时，社会资本作为不平等的另一个来源往往缺乏关注。根据 Granovetter（找工作。接触和职业研究，芝加哥大学出版社，剑桥，1974 年）揭示的劳动力市场上相当松散的联系（即弱联系）的工具价值，本文超越了人力资本方法，包括在收入函数中以弱联系职业支持的形式衡量工具性社会资本。应用 Oaxaca-Blinder 分解和分位数回归，我们发现有和没有学术家庭背景的人之间存在显着的平均工资差距。很大程度上可以用教育程度较低的家庭在人力和工具性社会资本方面的赤字来解释：较低的教育程度占了两组之间工资差距的一半以上，而较少的职业支持解释了大约 5% 的工资差距。微分。此外，非学术家庭背景与他们在工资分配中的工具性社会资本回报的显着赤字有关。因此，调查结果表明，德国劳动力市场上的机会不平等发生在教育系统之外，