The influence of age as a status has long been recognized in sociology; however, until now, sociologists have not tried to incorporate the age status conception into models of economic attainment, but instead have tended to adopt an economic perspective which regards age solely as an indicator of experience. Economic theories (both marginal productivity and human capital theories) posit that employers offer greater salaries to employees with more experience because they are more productive, and they ignore the status properties of age.
However, earlier sociological work does suggest that age is a socially significant status in society and that it may have consequences for employees' careers in organizations. Observers of organizations have noted that informal norms seem to exist about age and, in particular, that a relatively young age (30-40 years) tends to be considered the cutoff point for an employee to be considered for career advancement in some organizations (Chinoy 1955; Martin and Strauss 1959). If age is an important influence on organizational careers, then traditional economic analyses of employees' earnings within firms (Weisbrod and Karpoff 1968; Wise 1975a; Halaby 1978) may have partially misconceptualized the meaning of age-derived experience variables or may have misspecified estimations of experience effects by ignoring age (see Klevmarken and Quigley 1976; Bartlett and Jencks 1978).
It should be noted that the age variable used in these analyses, age of entry into the firm, is very similar to the variable that economists customarily use to reflect previous experience (that gained before joining the current employer). The calculation of the two variables is highly similar (entry age is age minus tenure; previous experience is age minus tenure minus years of education minus 5), and the two are likely to be highly-though not perfectly-correlated in most cases. The main difference here is a matter of context. This variable means something different in a single organizational hierarchy than it does in the open labor markets studied by survey data. As we shall see, the present findings clearly indicate a different pattern of results.
College Selectivity Effects
College effects have attracted the interest of social researchers, but they have been regarded in very different ways. According to human capital theory, graduates of "better" colleges attain greater socioeconomic success because these colleges are more selective and provide a better education. According to sociologists, "better" colleges have more successful graduates because these colleges confer greater status to their graduates and these status properties increase their graduates' chances of success (Kamens 1977; Mayer 1977; Collins 1979). Mayer (1977) contends that colleges actually have implicit "social charters"which sometimes give highly specific social statuses and career niches to their graduates. Operationally, economists have measured college quality in terms of rankings of the selectivity of colleges, using Astin's (1965) scale, which is based on the average Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score of enrolled undergraduates.2 Economists interpret this ranking as a rough indicator of individuals' ability, assuming that individuals who attend more selective colleges are generally more able (see Weisbrod and Karpoff 1968; Wise 1975a).
However, since more selective colleges are also likely to confer more status, sociologists can interpret this as a status scale (Karabel and McClelland, 1983). Of course, it is not an easy matter to decide between these interpretations.
It should be noted that the Astin scale was formulated in the early 1960s, while most of my sample graduated from college in the 1950s. It is possible that some colleges changed in student body composition after some of my sample members graduated. Although I have no systematic way to adjust for this possibility, my subjective impression is that the colleges which are most heavily represented in the sample would have ranked similarly over the previous decade.
However, empirical analyses can discern whether colleges affect job statuses and earnings, and, if the analyses are longitudinal, they can reveal the timing of these effects. As previously suggested, human capital theory suggests that ability affects earnings gradually over the first decade, so it would predict a gradually emerging effect of college selectivity. Social structural theory suggests that individual status attributes (like college status) affect attainments from the outset. To the extent that longitudinal analyses support one or the other prediction, they shall offer support to that theory and its interpretation of college selectivity.
Earnings
Employees' earnings in the company are indicated in the exact amount. There are several indicators in the file. The present re-search uses actual earnings, not merely base pay. This corporation has a system which pays employees merit pay-increased earnings above customary salary which is contingent on a supervisor's judgment about the employee's performance. This system is a particularly pertinent one for this analysis, because it explicitly attempts to implement the "pay-for-productivity" system which economists assume to exist. All analyses of earnings use the natural logarithm of earnings as the variable analyzed, with earnings being standardized to 1967 dollars, following the conventions in economic research. Unless otherwise noted, any mention of earnings as a variable will refer to these transformations throughout this.
Tenure
The corporation kept careful records of years of company experience (here called tenure). Any leaves of absence or other periods when the employee was not employed (except short illnesses) are subtracted from the indicator so that it accurately reflects how long the person has been employed with the firm. This indicator had important implications for retirement benefits, so it was carefully recorded and monitored.
Entry Age
The age that employees entered the company can be easily computed as age minus tenure. This variable can be taken as an indication of an employee's age relative to that of others in his cohort. Since this study hypothesizes that age confers a social status to employees which has effects on their attainments independent of their tenure, entry age provides a convenient indicator of age which, unlike current age, is not highly correlated with tenure (r = .14) and consequently does not create problems of multicollinearity. As subsequently noted, this variable closely resembles, both in definition and in empirical correlation, a variable economists commonly use to represent work experience prior to joining the present employer. The reasons for choosing entry age rather than previous experience are noted in the introduction and in the discussion of results.
NON-B.A.
If an employee has a B.A. or B.S. from an accredited college, this variable has a value of 0; otherwise its value is 1. Anyone with more than a college degree is also coded as 0. All employees with less than a college degree are coded as 1. Although this could be a highly heterogeneous group, informants in the personnel department suggested that most employees probably have at least a high school diploma because company hiring practices encouraged, but did not require, a diploma. The "backwards" coding of this variable is done to permit the college variables (described later) to be added.
M.B.A.
The records indicate the highest degree held by employees. If an employee has a master's or higher degree (M.A., M.B.A., Ph.D., M.D., LL.B.) from an accredited university, this variable is coded to have a value of 1; otherwise its value is 0. Since over 80% of individuals with this level of degree held M.B.A.'s, it is designated "M.B.A."
