Danish flexicurity and occupational mobility: A comparison with the United States

Journal Article Inter-generational Occupational Mobility and Legislative Voting Behavior Get access Samuel C. Patterson Samuel C. Patterson State University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 43, Issue 1, October 1964, Pages 90–93, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/43.1.90 Published: 01 October 1964

STUDIES of social stratification in the United States have shown a striking contradiction in findings. The few studies of vertical mobility' report that a large minority or even majority of men are engaged in occupations with socio-economic status different from their fathers. The community-focused investigations of social classes, on the other hand, either neglect to report any observed vertical mobility or imply strongly that mobility is rare and class lines are firm.2 An exception is a recent community study by Deasy,3 who took the novel step of inquiring directly about new and former members of the elite group and about families who had failed in their attempts to enter the elite. It is significant that she found a considerable influx into the upper-upper class. Some of the sociologists engaged in the study of stratification have found it possible to reconcile these divergent findings. First of all, it is apparent that certain of the more active students of American stratification are not diligently looking into evidence on mobility. A second interpretation, which has been discussed at some length by Florence Kluckhohn,4 is based on observation of the failure in the community studies of stratification to record the origins and careers of individuals migrating into or away from the community. It is to be expected that individuals who leave their home communities become detached from stable status relationships and manifest unusual mobility. The present study attempts to test this hypothesis. The Kentucky community studied, containing about 1500 white households, is within an hour's drive of two moderate sized cities and within a hundred miles of two metropolitan centers. The reported on are the white male household heads residing in the community and having one or more sons aged 15 or older who have completed their schooling. The sons are divided into two groups: those who have remained in the community, and those who have migrated. For each of these two groups occupations of fathers and sons are scaled and compared with each other. In addition, inter-generation occupational mobility is related to general social status scores of the fathers based on four combined indices: occupation, type of house, dwelling area, and prestige ratings by local judges.5 The combinations of occupations for each set of sons and fathers are shown in Table 1; the complete table is included because of the paucity of similar mobility data in the literature. The patterns of occupational inheritance and mobility here displayed resemble those found in the studies 1 Richard Centers, Mobility of Urban Occupational Strata, American Sociological Review, 13 (1948), pp. 197-203; H. D. Anderson and P. E. Davidson, Occupational Mobility in An American Community, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1937; C. C. North and P. K. Hatt, Jobs and Occupations: A Popular Evaluation, in L. Wilson and W. L. Kolb, Sociological Analysis, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949, p. 473. 2 The widely known studies published by W. L. Warner and his associates are particularly in point here. 3 Leila Calhoun Deasy, Social Mobility in Northtown (Cornell University Dissertation), 1953. 4Florence R. Kluckhohn, Dominant and Substitute Profiles of Cultural Orientation, Social Forces. 28 (1950). p. 388. 5 The scales used, except for prestige, were those presented in W. L. Warner, M. Meeker, and K. Eells, Social Class in America: a Manual of Procedure for the Mleasurement of Social Status, Chicago: Science Research Associates. 1949. Perforce, parental reports of migrant sons' occupations were used.PI

Occupational Mobility in the Year 2000: Projections for American Men and Women

The research of a generation of economic and social historians has given us considerable insight into the occupational mobility experienced in the United States by immigrants in the first half of the nineteenth century. This work has shown that upward occupational mobility was infrequent during the careers of first-generation immigrants in the United States: no more than a third of immigrants who began their careers in the United States as unskilled workers in cities as different as Newburyport, Boston, Poughkeepsie, and South Bend were able to rise into the ranks of skilled or white collar workers, even after several decades in the United States. This poor performance seems inconsistent with the belief expressed by many immigrants that the United States was a place where economic advancement—particularly occupational mobility—was likely. This apparent paradox may result from a censoring problem in these studies: they examine immigrants’ U.S. occupations using sources such as the U.S. census, city directories, and local tax records, while immigrants were probably least likely to be enumerated in such sources in their first years in the United States. As a result, these studies may miss a great deal of occupational mobility if mobility was most likely in the first years after arrival. Even if occupational mobility was genuinely infrequent among recent arrivals, immigrants’ optimism may have been justified if some of those observed as white collar, skilled workers, or farmers in the United States had been unskilled workers before they left Europe. To see whether either of these is the case, we need to know how immigrants’ postmigration occupations changed as their time in the United States increased, and how their premigration and postmigration occupations compared.

Examining geographic and occupational mobility: A loglinear modelling approach

Research Question: The purpose of this study was to provide an update on the status of African American working women in public parks and recreation (city and county) in the United States. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What is the occupational mobility pattern for the sample of African American female public parks and recreation employees from 2010–2015?; (2) Is there a relationship between select demographic variables and occupational mobility within the sample population?; and (3) What are the sample population's perceptions about race and gender as potential barriers to occupational mobility? Research Methods: A 50-item e-survey was developed utilizing Qualtrics and was sent to study participants via e-mail. The survey contained three sections: (1) perceived status (importance of the position in the organization) of 17 common occupational titles; (2) information about occupational mobility; and (3) demographic information. The occupational titles used in the present study were consistent with the titles used in previous occupational mobility studies in public parks and recreation and in previous National Recreation and Park Association salary surveys. Results and Findings: Overall, the majority of the sample (79.6%, n = 90) did not experience any mobility between 2010–2015; 16% (15.9%, n = 18) were upwardly mobile, and the remaining 4.4% (n = 4) experienced downward mobility. A weak but significant association was found between the variables mobility pattern and position type [X 2 (6, N = 113) = 13.20, p = .04; V = .24]. However, no significant associations were found between mobility pattern, age, number of years of experience in public parks and recreation, marital status, minor children at home, educational level and income, respectively. When the respondents were asked whether they were presently seeking a position that they felt would be a career advancement, 53.1% (n = 60) indicated “yes” while the remaining 46.9% (n = 53) responded “no”. Implications: The respondents in the study indicated that their race or gender served as a facilitator or deterrent to occupational mobility. The women in this study were interested in advancing their careers, but considered multiple factors before pursuing opportunities. In order to more accurately examine career mobility “exit” data should be examined.

Trends in Occupational Mobility in Indianapolis

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

This paper used the 2003 New Immigrant Survey (n=2,305) to examine the relationship between occupational mobility before and after migration and depression among immigrants. There were two measures of occupational mobility, change in occupational prestige and educational match. For both measures, upward and downward mobility were associated with higher depression. This association was only present among women; for men, there were no significant relationships between the occupational mobility measures and depression. The findings suggest that immigrant occupational mobility may not solely represent the acquisition or reduction of material resources. Instead, occupational mobility may encompass immigrants' unique stressors and post-migration working environments that produce a range of psychosocial influences on mental health. Gender differences also suggest immigrant women face unique stressors that arise from adjusting to both the working and domestic spheres.

We study trends in occupational and geographic mobility of single and married men and women in the United States over the last 40 years. We find that while occupational mobility has increased for almost all subgroups of males, most of the increase was accounted for by a sharp increase in the mobility of singles. Similarly, the rates of geographic mobility were virtually identical for single and married workers in the early 1970s, but diverged since then – the increase in the geographic mobility of single men was more pronounced than the increase for married men. We discuss several theories of worker mobility in light of these trends and suggest that the increased labor force attachment of women might have played a prominent role in driving these changes.

Hawaii, as a destination for foreign immigrants and internal migrants, is a place of rather mixed blessings. The physical environment is unsurpassed; it is one of the most beautiful spots on the globe. It has a climate that is especially attractive to those coming from other Pacific Islands such as Samoa and the Philippines. It has a relatively good reputation for its social environment, and for its tolerance for ethnic differences and multiple languages. These positive attractions, however, are somewhat counterbalanced by the nature ofthe economy in Hawaii, and the rather high cost oflivingespecially housing-compared to other locations in the United States. The dominance of the economy by tourism, the U.S. military, and large-scale agriculture severely limits the opportunities for occupational and economic mobility. Stratification along ethnic lines could be taken as another sign of the difficulty of settling in Hawaii. The general motives for migration are well documented. In a recent review by DeJong and Fawcett (1 98 l), five major motives were summarized: economic improvement and social mobility, residential satisfaction, affiliation with family and friends, changes in life-styles, and maintenance of community-based social and economic ties, a negative factor which inhibits migration. To what extent are any of the objectives actually obtained by immigrants in Hawaii? In this paper we examine some of the socioeconomic consequences of the migration of Samoans, Koreans, and Filipinos in Hawaii in contrast to local Japanese and Caucasian residents. Special attention is given to income levels, occupational mobility, and difficulty of adjustment as indicated by the incidence of stressful life events. The research results reported here are part of a larger comparative study of the communication patterns and adjustment of these five ethnic groups in Hawaii conducted by the East-West Center's Communication Institute. Other papers have examined the communication patterns and adjustment of the Korean immigrants (Yum 1979, 1982), interpersonal communication networks (Yum and Kincaid 1979), differential patterns of news interest (Wang and Kincaid 1982), interethnic group stereotyping (Yum and Wang 1983), and the cultural convergence of the Korean immigrants (Kincaid et al. 1983). and from resident Japanese-Americans and CaucasianAmericans who were born in Hawaii or migrated there from Japan or the U.S. mainland. Of the Japanese respondents, 93% were born in Hawaii. All data were collected by faceto-face, home interviews by native-language speakers from the same ethnic group. The Korean sample was randomly selected from an exhaustive list of the 249 Korean surnames found in the 1978 Honolulu telephone directory. The list of Koreans in the telephone directory was somewhat biased in that lower income groups and new amvals were not as likely to be listed. Therefore an effort was made to interview a supplementary sample of new arrivals by approaching them through social workers who were working in the Kalihi-Palama area of Honolulu, where a large number of recent amvals were known to be concentrated. Seven percent of the total sample were selected through this approach. Face-to-face interviews were conducted at residences after a brief telephone interview to screen out disconnected numbers and non-Koreans. The Caucasian and Filipino samples were selected by means of a three-stage cluster technique, beginning with census tracts randomly selected in proportion to the known probability of members of those ethnic groups residing within them. Then households were selected systematically from random starting points following a serpentine path through the tract. Finally, each selected household became the starting point for clusters which were identified by means of the Hawaii Telephone Crossreference Directory for Oahu. Potential respondents were then telephoned for screening according to the following eligibility requirements: resident of Hawaii, at least 18 years of age, member of the required ethnic group (for Filipinos, only Ilocanos born in the Philippines), and willingness to participate in the study. The Japanese sample was selected by the same procedures followed for the Korean sample: randomly selected Japanese surnames from the 1978 Honolulu Telephone Directory, prescreened by telephone for eligibility and willingness to participate. The Samoan sample was selected first with a random selection of known Samoan surnames from the Honolulu Telephone Directory. Each name drawn was visited at home and if he/she met the eligibility requirements and was interviewed, then he/she was asked to identify up to 15 other Samoan households in the same neighborhood for interviewing before moving on to the next neighborhood cluster. When 15 interviews were completed in one neighborhood, interviewing was begun in another neighborhood until 200 interviews were conducted. Although the Samoan sample represents the major subgroups of Samoans on Oahu, it does not qualify as a probability sample. Interviewers were instructed to interview the head of the household (or head's spouse) randomly assigned according to sex, to insure an even representation of male and female respondents. If the household head was not married, that person was interviewed regardless of sex.

In this study we argue that wage inequality and occupational mobility are intimately related. We are motivated by our empirical findings that human capital is occupation-specific and that the fraction of workers switching occupations in the United States was as high as 16% a year in the early 1970s and had increased to 19% by the early 1990s. We develop a general equilibrium model with occupation-specific human capital and heterogeneous experience levels within occupations. We argue that the increase in occupational mobility was due to the increase in the variability of productivity shocks to occupations. The model, calibrated to match the increase in occupational mobility, accounts for over 90% of the increase in wage inequality over the period. A distinguishing feature of the theory is that it accounts for changes in within-group wage inequality and the increase in the variability of transitory earnings.

In this study we argue that wage inequality and occupational mobility are intimately related. We are motivated by our empirical findings that human capital is occupation-specific and that the fraction of workers switching occupations in the United States was as high as 16% a year in the early 1970s and had increased to 19% by the early 1990s. We develop a general equilibrium model with occupation-specific human capital and eterogeneous experience levels within occupations. We argue that the increase in occupational mobility was due to the increase in the variability of productivity shocks to occupations. The model, calibrated to match the increase in occupational mobility, accounts for over 90% of the increase in wage inequality over the period. A distinguishing feature of the theory is that it accounts for changes in within-group wage inequality and the increase in the variability of transitory earnings.

This study examines the effects of occupational and educational mobility in two Latin American countries, Costa Rica and Mexico, and in the United States. We hypothesized that the mobile person in Costa Rica or Mexico will experience more normlessness (anomia) than nonmobile persons from his class of origin and his class of destination; but in the United States, where mobility is said to be more commonly expected, the socially mobile person will experience no more normlessness than nonmobile persons in his class of origin or class of destination. Powerlessness was expected to be a function of occupational level and downward occupational and educational mobility. We found some evidence that: (1) educational and occupational mobility produces intense normlessness in the more ascriptive societies but not in the United States; (2) downward educational mobility produces an intense sense of powerlessness in all three countries; (3) there are large differences between the United States and the Latin American countries in terms of both normlessness and powerlessness; and (4) a negative relationship between normlessness and occupational level appears in the United States but not in Latin America.

We investigate the evolution and the sources of aggregate employment reallocation in the United States in the 1976-2000 March files of the Current Population Survey. We focus on the annual flows of male workers across occupations at the Census 3-digit level, the finest disaggregation at which a moving worker changes career and relocates to an observationally different technology. The total reallocation of employment across occupations is strongly procyclical and mildly declining until the early 1990s, and then relatively flat. The negative trend is entirely due to younger workers, as it is reversed for men over age 40. To reveal the sources of these patterns, while correcting for possible worker selection into employment, we construct a synthetic panel based on birth cohorts, and estimate various models of worker occupational mobility. We find that the cross-occupation dispersion in labor demand, as measured by an index of net employment reallocation, has a strong association with total reallocation. The demographic composition of employment, more specifically the increasing average age and college attainment level, explains some of the trend and cycles in worker flows. High unemployment reduces the level of mobility directly. However, more strikingly, the level of unemployment also influences the magnitude and the sign of the education effect. As predicted by job-matching theory, occupational mobility has residual persistence, so shocks to aggregate employment reallocation propagate through time. Finally, cohorts born after the mid-1950's have increasingly low occupational mobility beyond what can be explained by their observable characteristics