Social Mobility and Demographic Behaviour: Long Term Perspectives

Abstract

Abstract We introduce a collection of papers that examine interactions between demographic behavior and social mobility via analysis of historical and contemporary longitudinal, individual- and household-level socioeconomic and demographic data. authors originally presented these papers at The International Seminar on Social Mobility and Demographic Behavior: A Long Term Perspective held at the California Center for Population Research at UCLA in December 2009, and organized on behalf of the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Historical Demography. We convened the meeting as a means of promoting the use of historical demographic data to address a topic of contemporary relevance that has been the subject of much attention lately: how the inter-generational transmission of socioeconomic status and socioeconomic differentials in demographic behavior interact to shape patterns of inequality over the long term. papers here focus specifically on relationships among fertility, marriage, migration, and social mobility. 1. Introduction Demographic behavior and social mobility interact. Such interactions occur across and within generations. Across generations, household demographic context and socioeconomic status jointly influence demographic outcomes and socioeconomic attainment chances in adulthood. Within generations, demographic behaviors such as marriage and childbearing affect attainment chances, and socioeconomic status affects demographic outcomes such as marriage, childbearing, and mortality. At the macro-level, socioeconomic differentials in demographic behavior and demographic differentials in socioeconomic attainment interact to shape long-term trends in population composition (Mare and Maralani 2006). Among the relevant processes, demographic influences on socioeconomic attainment and the interactive influence of patterns of demographic and socioeconomic differentials on population composition have received the least attention. influence of family socioeconomic status on the socioeconomic attainment of the next generation is a long-standing preoccupation in the study of social stratification. influence of individual socioeconomic status on various demographic outcomes has been a long-standing interest in demography as well, but interest in the influence of family demographic context on socioeconomic attainment is more recent. Most reflect interest in the implications for attainment chances of recent increases in the diversity of family structures in developed countries (McLanahan and Percheski 2008). Studies of how socioeconomic differentials in demographic behavior and demographic differentials in socioeconomic attainment interact to shape trends in population composition are even more recent (Mare and Maralani 2006). Along these lines, historical demography and historical social mobility as areas of inquiry have, until recently, been largely separate. They intersected only insofar as considering historical studies of the determinants of demographic outcomes such as marriage, reproduction and death included socioeconomic status as an explanatory variable. Thus, we have numerous studies of socioeconomic differentials in mortality and fertility; for example, Bengtsson, Campbell, and Lee (2004) and Tsuya et al. (2010). Historical studies of social mobility have largely focused on inter-generational mobility, especially the influence of parental socioeconomic status. To some extent, this separation reflected the fact that historical databases of the requisite size and detail were, until recently, not widely available. New historical databases offer the prospect of integrating the study of social mobility and demography. Many of the longitudinal household- and individual-level population databases used in recent studies of historical demography are especially well-suited to the investigation of interactions between demographic behavior, social mobility, and population composition. …