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This article investigates the patterns of male nonagricultural self-employment in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. It is argued that the development of self-employment in these four countries is based on specific institutional and economic frameworks resulting in different opportunities and incentives for taking up self-employment These differences affect the relevance of individual resources like education and work experience. The empirical analyses are based on national Labor Force Surveys. Although we find a remarkable number of common general patterns in self-employment in all four countries, the findings also indicate that educational requirements and the relevance of age-related experience differ fundamentally among the four countries and along industrial branches. Specific regulations and general settings in single branches and countries result in distinct opportunities for self employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines vocational training systems of France and Germany. Compared to France, it is argued that the German dual system of vocational training is in better touch with industry and its actual work requirements. This produces a workforce that is highly skilled in a given occupation and immediately useful to employers. Vocational training in Germany is closely linked to the school system. In contrast to France, the basic structural features of the German education system have been relatively unaffected by the educational reforms following World War II. A high percentage of school leavers from all levels of general secondary education opt for subsequent vocational training. Traditionally, the dual system is by far the most important form of vocational training in Germany. Overall, the landscape of higher education is relatively unstratified with the universities. Vocational training policy assumes substantial economic and sociopolitical responsibility in Germany. The system of vocational training is considered to be central to the national economy's competitiveness and to people's integration into their working-life. German vocational training system has proved to be highly flexible in adapting qualitatively and quantitatively to the challenges of the 1970s and 1980s.

The article discusses the significance of economic opportunities, organizational arrangements and institutional linkages in gender stratification research in European countries. The relationship between the female wage rate and a country's level of female labor force participation at any time is influenced by organizational arrangements that affect the "opportunity costs" of women's time away from home. Institutional pressures toward long-term occupational decision-making are likely to be particularly significant to women's occupational careers when accompanied by great structural and cultural barriers to combining motherhood and paid employment. In Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, public child care provisions especially for children under age 3-are scarce and are primarily used by single parents or low-income families. France and Sweden have highly developed systems of publicly organized child care. The educational systems of France, Great Britain, and Sweden, are much less oriented toward conferral of occupation specific credentials. organizational and institutional factors provide important insights as to the mechanisms by which the sexual division of labor becomes institutionalized in the family and in the labor market.

The Federal Republic of Germany and the U.S. are most similar for mobility from father's to son's first occupation. We believe this reflects the fact that transmission of resources from the family of origin to the ports of entry into the labor market is the same for the two societies. Thus similar nuclear family structures will have a similar effect on education level and on starting position. The labor market, however, is a more complex mechanism; it reacts to individually achieved resources and moreover has very different features from one society to another, owing to legislative provisions or various hierarchical structures that link job changes to specific career trajectories. This is an effect not only of the differences in hierarchical structure as observed in the case of France and the Federal Republic, but also of differences in the correlation between education and entry positions and further mobility chances in different societies or in different contexts. Movements within the occupational hierarchy and positional privileges as one goes up the occupational ladder seem to be much more structured in the Federal Republic. The American and, in part, the French system are characterized by primarily symmetric mobility, with cases of upward career mobility balanced out by cases of downward mobility.

The article presents information on the labor market and occupational career in the Federal Republic of Germany. The human capital theory is based on the premise that individuals invest in their education in youth and early adulthood and thereby create human capital. The income lost during education, as well as the costs of education, are compensated for later on in a person's working life by the returns of education, higher income and better occupational chances. More education invariably leads to better occupational chances and higher income. The reason given for this is that skilled labor is more productive than unskilled labor in all jobs. In the first empirical analyses of the human capital theory, the influence of the years of training in the educational system were at issue. Later research, however, also took into account the number of years of occupational experience. Thus working persons continue to invest in their training even after completing their formal education. Occupational mobility processes and changes in income during working life are thus direct indicators of changes in individual productivity, an increment or decrement in occupational knowledge, abilities, and occupational experience. However, human capital theory has nothing to say about occupational mobility processes when the employment system is in equilibrium because no one can then improve his present position.