6 - Temporal Change in Occupational Mobility: Evidence for Men in the United States

Abstract

In a reanalysis of trend data on occupational mobility among men in the United States, we define ways in which movement among occupation groups across generations might be constant even when the occupational structure is changing. Our analysis suggests that no change has taken place in occupational mobility (as specified by our definition). Rather, the changing occupational distribution is the major factor affecting patterns of intergenerational occupational mobility. This implies the possibility of constructing occupational mobility tables for times when the age-specific occupation distribution is known, but no mobility survey has been carried out. Moreover, rather than treating the underlying process of mobility as a variable in comparative research and the variation in the distribution of occupations as a disturbance, it may be more fruitful to treat transformations of the occupational structure as problematic in comparative mobility research.