Analysing Intergenerational Transmissions: From Social Mobility to Social Reproduction

Little is known about the origins of the stratified nature of preventive health behaviour. In this paper, we introduce theory and methodology from the field of social mobility research. Intergenerational socially mobile individuals can provide insights into the central discussion about how health lifestyles or cultural health capital develop over the life course, as they have encountered different contexts of socialisation, each with its own characteristic health-related practices. We study the use of regular mammography screening by Belgian women using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement and we operationalise social mobility as occupational mobility using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88). By means of diagonal reference models, we are able to discern the effects of the social position of origin, the social position of destination and social mobility itself, contrary to the less rigorous linear regression approach that prevails in health behaviour research. As expected, the take up of mammography screening is strongly influenced by social position. It seems that both upwardly and downwardly mobile women adapt to the mammography screening practices in their position of destination. This study shows the potential for social mobility research to enrich the debate on health lifestyles.

Social mobility research mainly investigates directional change in socio-economic circumstance. This article contributes to the strand of social mobility research that examines subjective experiences of economic movement. It analyses social mobility as a set of relationally, temporally and spatially embedded social practices, subjectively experienced and interpreted. The interactive nexus between social and spatial mobility is a fruitful line of inquiry, and the experiences of international migrants are distinctly suited for developing this analysis. Drawing on a qualitative study of migrants’ mobilities, both social and spatial, post-arrival in Australia, we argue that social mobility is experienced as sets of contingent social practices. These in/variably co-exist with aspirations for a sense of belonging and connectedness, a sense of security and other non-economic needs and desires and are also always adjusted over time. In addition, migrants’ status as legal, cultural or social Others shapes the experience of social mobility in distinctive ways.

An application of diagonal reference models and time-varying covariates in social mobility research on mortality and fertility

Straipsnio tikslas yra analitinė socialinio mobilumo posocialistinėse šalyse tyrimų apžvalga. Pirmame skirsnyje pristatomos socialinio mobilumo sąvokos ir tyrimų kryptys, aprašomi skirtingais socialinės struktūros modeliais grįsti socialinio mobilumo matavimo būdai. Antrame skirsnyje nušviečiami socialistinio laikotarpio socialinio mobilumo tyrimų bruožai. Toliau socialinio mobilumo tyrimai grupuojami pagal naudojamus klasinius ir neklasinius socialinės struktūros modelius. Trečiame skirsnyje analizuojami tarpklasinio socialinio mobilumo tyrimai, pabrėžiant juose naudojamas klasių schemas bei absoliutaus ir santykinio socialinio mobilumo skyrimo reikalingumą. Ketvirtoje straipsnio dalyje pristatomi tyrimai, besiremiantys statuso pasiekimo modeliu, išryškinant šių tyrimų metodologijos ypatumus ir jų ribotumus. Rečiau pasitaikančios socialinio mobilumo rūšies – subjektyvaus socialinio mobilumo – tyrimai aprašomi penktame skirsnyje. Paskutinėje straipsnio dalyje apžvelgiama socialinio mobilumo tyrimų situacija Lietuvoje, pristatomi socialinio mobilumo tyrimai socialistinėje ir posocialistinėje Lietuvoje.

The rise of income and the demise of class and social status? A systematic review of measures of socio-economic position in stratification research

‘Microclasses’, detailed occupational groups, have recently been suggested as being the basis of research in social stratification; occupations represent ‘real’ social groups in contrast to the purely ‘nominal’ categories of either ‘big class’ schemata or socio-economic status scales. The microclass approach in social mobility research has been applied in a recent paper, the authors claiming to show that a strong propensity exists for intergenerational occupational inheritance, and that such inheritance is the dominant factor in social reproduction and limits equality of opportunity. We model a larger version of the same Swedish dataset as used by these authors. We show: (i) that while with many occupational groups a marked degree of intergenerational inheritance occurs among men, such inheritance is far less apparent among women, and, for both men and women, accounts for less than half of the total association in the occupational mobility table; (ii) that the microclass approach does not deal in a theoretically consistent way with the remaining associational underlying patterns of occupational mobility, since appeal is made to the theoretically alien idea of ‘socio-economic closeness’; and (iii) that a standard class approach, modified to account for occupational inheritance, can provide a more integrated understanding of patterns of immobility and mobility alike. We also give reasons for doubting whether it will prove possible to establish a theoretically consistent microclass approach to explaining intergenerational mobility propensities. Finally, on the basis of our empirical results and of the relevant philosophical literature, we argue that the microclass approach is unlikely to be helpful in addressing normative questions of equality of opportunity.

Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility—especially in the developing world. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves—which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines—typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern. Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?

This chapter has two purposes. The first is to define clearly different social mobility concepts and components. The second is to embed these concepts and components into a larger context of social mobility research. The core of the chapter develops six mobility concepts and their measures as well as six macromobility components and their measures. The next section relates these concepts and components to issues in the mobility literature. The chapter concludes with a checklist of suggestions for conducting and presenting social mobility research: being explicit about several preliminaries—outcome of interest, context, and level of analysis—and then four steps—question, mobility concept(s), mobility measure(s), and empirical findings.

Nursing is often associated with providing working-class women a route to upward social mobility. This article argues that although nursing is a relatively open profession, the impact of social class endures, with the main division between nurses who are from higher professional backgrounds and the rest. We utilise the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) to explore nurses’ social origins; the relationship between background and economic, social, and cultural capital; and the impact of origin and capitals on income (and inferred career trajectory). While recognising the methodological limitations of the GBCS, we suggest there may be a ‘class ceiling’ in nursing, and that class advantages are still significant in lower professions of the public sector. Class identification endures regardless of whether nurses have been upwardly or downwardly mobile. We also suggest future directions for intragenerational mobility and gender in social mobility research and make a case for longitudinal and qualitative analysis of nurses’ trajectories. Our findings indicate that the downwardly mobile children of the middle classes retain their classed advantages as they establish their own careers.

Conventional social mobility research, which measures family social class background relative to only fathers' characteristics, presents an outmoded picture of families—a picture wherein mothers' economic participation is neither common nor important. This article demonstrates that such measurement is theoretically and empirically untenable. Models that incorporate both mothers' and fathers' characteristics into class origin measures fit observed mobility patterns better than do conventional models, and for both men and women. Furthermore, in contrast to the current consensus that conventional measurement strategies do not alter substantive research conclusions, analyses of cohort change in social mobility illustrate the distortions that conventional practice can produce in stratification research findings. By failing to measure the impact of mothers' class, the current practice misses a recent upturn in the importance of family background for class outcomes among men in the United States. The conventional approach suggests no change between cohorts, but updated analyses reveal that inequality of opportunity increased significantly for men born since the mid-1960s compared with those born earlier in the century.

The main interest of this review is in the developments in social mobility research during the last ten years. These can be characterized as the revitalization of the class perspective, intensive comparative (cross-national and cross-temporal) research efforts, and the large-scale application of the log-linear modeling approach. After discussing the basic ideas of mobility studies conducted in an explicit class framework and the developments regarding class concepts, the review summarizes the major results of empirical research as to intergenerational mobility of men and women. These results are yielded within different conceptual frameworks for several industrialized countries. It continues by examining the constituent worklife processes, stressing the effects of different institutional arrangements and of labor market conditions for intragenerational mobility. Finally, a brief summary of the research desiderata still existing in social mobility research closes the review.

The main interest of this review is in the developments in social mobility research during the last ten years. These can be characterized as the revitalization of the class perspective, intensive comparative (cross-national and cross-temporal) research efforts, and the large-scale application of the log-linear modeling approach. After discussing the basic ideas of mobility studies conducted in an explicit class framework and the developments regarding class concepts, the review summarizes the major results of empirical research as to intergenerational mobility of men and women. These results are yielded within different conceptual frameworks for several industrialized countries. It continues by examining the constituent worklife processes, stressing the effects of different institutional arrangements and of labor market conditions for intragenerational mobility. Finally, a brief summary of the research desiderata still existing in social mobility research closes the review.

Social-epidemiological explanations of health inequalities usually take the existence of social inequality as a given and ignore the fundamental questions of why social inequality exists in the first place and why it is so persistent. I review here theories of the explanation of social inequality to identify the processes and/or structures responsible for its persistence. This paper is a review of the relevant sociological literature. The sociological literature suggests that what persists over long periods of time is not a specific manifestation of social inequality but a 'meta-phenomenon': the fact that there are different social positions, that these social positions give access to different levels of resources in some graded way and that the distribution of individuals over social positions follows rules that create inequalities in the opportunities for achieving a more advantaged social position. The durability of social inequality in this generic form can then be understood from the persistence of the underlying mechanisms and processes - for example, humans are driven by self-interest, while most objects of their striving are in short supply, therefore a struggle for rewards is present in all societies; humans are unequally endowed, therefore some are more successful in this struggle for resources than others; and the inequalities resulting from these individual level actions are structurally fixated through the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage, various societal institutions, and cultural factors. The sociological literature suggests that some mechanisms producing and perpetuating social inequality are more 'benign' than others. Health inequalities may be more than a consequence of social inequality and may play a more profound part by amplifying social inequalities.

Social mobility research has consistently demonstrated that a strong link exists between an individual's social class origins and their social class destination. Yet, in absolute terms, the relationship between class origins and destinations does appear to be weaker now than it was in the past. There has been a increase in the numbers of those of all class origins entering higher-level service class occupations, and a decrease in those entering manual employment. However, while this would appear to be evidence of a high degree of fluidity in the class structure, these patterns can largely be explained by changes in the occupational structure: the expansion of non-manual occupations while manual ones have contracted (Goldthorpe 1987:59). When these structural effects are controlled for by looking at relative mobility rates, it is clear that there has been virtual stability in such rates over time. A relationship between origins and destinations is still in evidence (Goldthorpe 1987; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992). The relationship between class origins and destinations has therefore become widely established in social mobility research, and as a result, the emphasis is now moving towards explaining how these trends are created (Saunders 1995; Breen and Goldthorpe 1999).

Research in education has long noted teachers’ role in assisting social and ideological reproduction. Separately, scholarship has also investigated the use of extra-curricular activities in equipping disadvantaged students with social and cultural capital, to embark on social mobility. Positioned at the intersection of these two apparently disparate strands, this paper presents a case in which teachers’ extra-curricular work is seen to simultaneously enact subtle socio-ideological reproduction, and the facilitation of social mobility attainment. Specifically, the paper draws on a study of how teachers in a lower-status junior college in Singapore prepare their students in applying for prestigious state-sponsored scholarships. Through teachers’ extra-curricular work of allying and aligning, social mobility and social reproduction are simultaneously made possible, yet also exist in some tension. Thus, this paper offers a unique sociological perspective on teachers’ extra-curricular work and its significance for broader issues of meritocracy, social mobility, and social reproduction.