Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 30 (2012) 296–309 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Returns on education amongst men in England and Wales: The impact of residential segregation and ethno-religious background Nabil Khattab a,b,∗ , Ron Johnston b , Ibrahim Sirkeci c , Tariq Modood b a The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel b University of Bristol, United Kingdom c Regent’s College London, United Kingdom Received 25 April 2011; received in revised form 12 March 2012; accepted 19 March 2012 Abstract Individuals’ occupational and educational attainment is influenced by their ethnicity, religion and colour in the UK and elsewhere. In this paper, we analyse the impact of ethnicity, religion and colour along with residential segregation 1 and socio-economic deprivation on returns to education for men in England and Wales. We analyse the 2001 UK census data by employing multi-level logistic regression models. It is found that non-White groups including Christian Black-African, UK born Sikh-Indians and South Asian Muslims are found to suffer an ethnic penalty compared to Christian White-British. While there is evidence to suggest that Muslim men may experience a greater penalty compared to some non-Whites other non-Muslim groups too face ethno-religious penalties, sometimes even more severely such as in the case of Christian Black-Africans. Socio-economic difficulties faced by ethnic minorities are also linked to spatial segregation only when associated with high levels of area deprivation. This suggests that what matters may not be segregation per se, but whether or not it is associated with deprivation. © 2012 International Sociological Association Research Committee 28 on Social Stratification and Mobility. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Ethnicity; Segregation; Religion; Labour market; Britain; UK Census 2001; Returns on education 1. Introduction A recent article on the impact of ethnicity, religion and ‘colour’ in determining people’s educational and occu- pational attainment (Khattab, 2009) demonstrated that minorities in the UK are likely to face ethno-religious penalties in the labour market. Compared to Christian White-British, non-White groups, particularly Muslims, Sikh Indians and Black Africans were found to be disad- vantaged. Other studies have linked social and economic ∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Sociology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. Tel.: +972 25883339. E-mail address: nabilk@mscc.huji.ac.il (N. Khattab). hardships facing immigrants and ethnic minorities in the UK with their spatial concentration or segregation (Clark & Drinkwater, 2002, 2007a, 2007b; Fieldhouse, 1999; Fieldhouse & Tranmer, 2001). In this paper we extend that literature by analysing the impact of eth- nicity and religion in conjunction with the impact of local context – residential segregation and the area’s deprivation level – on returns to education in England and Wales. We argue that the socio-economic disad- vantages amongst men with a minority background are 1 By residential segregation we mean here the level of residen- tial concentration of all non-white groups counted together and our threshold for segregation 20% is much lower than that in much of the literature, namely 20% of members of non-white minorities resident in an area. 0276-5624/$ – see front matter © 2012 International Sociological Association Research Committee 28 on Social Stratification and Mobility. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rssm.2012.03.002