Intergenerational Social Mobility Research Articles

Influence of intergenerational social mobility on brain structure and global cognition: findings from the Whitehall II study across 20years.

Whether changes in socioeconomic position (SEP) across generations, i.e. intergenerational social mobility, influence brain degeneration and cognition in later life is unclear. To examine the association of social mobility, brain grey matter structure and global cognition. We analysed T1 brain MRI data of 771 old adults (69.8 ± 5.2years) from the Whitehall II MRI substudy, with MRI data collected between 2012 and 2016. Social mobility was defined by SEP changes from their fathers' generation to mid-life status. Brain structural outcomes include grey matter (GM) volume and cortical thickness (CT) covering whole brain. Global cognition was measured by the Mini Mental State Examination. We firstly conducted analysis of covariance to identify regional difference of GM volume and cortical thickness across stable high/low and upward/downward mobility groups, followed with diagonal reference models studying the relationship between mobility and brain cognitive outcomes, apart from SEP origin and destination. We additionally conducted linear mixed models to check mobility interaction over time, where global cognition was derived from three phases across 2002 to 2017. Social mobility related to 48 out of the 136 GM volume regions and 4 out of the 68 CT regions. Declined volume was particularly seen in response to downward mobility, whereas no independent association of mobility with global cognition was observed. Despite no strong evidence supporting direct influence of mobility on global cognition in later life, imaging findings warranted a severe level of neurodegeneration due to downward mobility from their father's generation.

The everyday female entrepreneur and the pursuit of emancipation

PurposeThis study takes an “entrepreneurship as emancipation” perspective to study entrepreneurs defined as “others” on multiple categories: women entrepreneurs whose ventures are necessity-based, bootstrapped and located in economically impoverished areas (neighborhoods) in two Latin-American countries: Chile and Peru.Design/methodology/approachThe study takes an interpretivist research approach and analyses inductively interviews with women entrepreneurs.FindingsThe findings reveal how everyday practices in pursuit of emancipation – while conducted within the existing patriarchal social structure – push the boundaries and contribute to changes in the social system via a variety of outcomes such as intergenerational social mobility, personal fulfilment and strengthening the communities in which the women entrepreneurs operate. Furthermore, while the authors find that in the particular Latin-American context under study, entrepreneuring activities become an emancipatory possibility for the everyday women entrepreneurs, they also highlight a “dark side” of their emancipatory projects.Originality/valueThe study contributes to recent critical studies in entrepreneurship by demonstrating the diversity and importance of the “mundane” activities undertaken by “necessity-based” entrepreneurs, and the significant – yet underappreciated – reach of their ventures’ impact on issues well beyond economic considerations.

Tourism and intergenerational social mobility

ABSTRACT This study examines the influence of regional tourism growth on intergenerational social mobility using a comprehensive cross-sectional data set that includes six survey waves from the Chinese General Social Survey. Our findings show that tourism significantly encourages upward intergenerational social mobility. These baseline results remain consistent even when we apply instrumental variables, employ a hierarchical linear model, and conduct other robustness tests. Based on theories related to intergenerational mobility, promoting industrial structure upgrading and addressing regional inequality to ease the financial burden of family education are ways in which tourism promotes upward intergenerational social mobility. Moreover, our analysis of different groups shows that tourism growth mainly improves intergenerational social mobility for male offspring from low-education or rural backgrounds. Consequently, while tourism may reduce urban-rural disparities to a degree, it could intensify gender inequality in rural areas. These findings reveal the theoretical mechanism through which tourism influences intergenerational mobility, providing a more comprehensive examination of tourism’s role in promoting regional sustainability.

Intergenerational social mobility of cohorts born from 1951 to 1980 in Finland

Intergenerational social mobility of cohorts born from 1951 to 1980 in Finland

Mobility Maintenance: Intergenerational Social Mobility and Entrepreneurial Entry

Mobility Maintenance: Intergenerational Social Mobility and Entrepreneurial Entry

A Sociological Case Study Based on Cultural Capital and Intergenerational Social Mobility

Cultural capital and intergenerational social mobility are important concepts in the field of sociology, which have significant implications for studying various sociological events and common phenomena in society. This article uses these two important concepts to study and analyze the actual case of news protagonist Percy, who hopes to work as a chef in the future but is obstructed by his family. Through case analysis, this article explores the cultural capital involved in this case and how it specifically affects the upward social mobility of individuals or families, and provides some sociological perspectives to analyze specific cases.

Intergenerational Upward and Downward Social Mobility: The Role of Intelligence, Effortful Control, Assertiveness, and Peer Competence in Early Adolescence

Relatively little is known about which competencies adolescents need to experience intergenerational social mobility. We investigated if intelligence, effortful control, assertiveness, and peer competence at age 11 was associated with upward or downward mobility at age 26, utilizing data from the TRAILS study ( N = 2229; ageT1 = 11.1 ( SD = 0.55); 50.8% girls). Results from our multinomial logistic regressions indicate that intelligence and effortful control, but not social competencies, are associated with upward mobility. Only intelligence was associated with downward mobility. Having dissimilar levels of competence than peers with the same parental SES was more important for social mobility than having similar competencies as peers with the same young adulthood SES. Social mobility thus happens primarily based on competence. However, given the importance of genetic predispositions and socioeconomic environment for intelligence and effortful control, and the limited appreciation of alternative competencies, social mobility remains to some extent unmeritocratic.

Social reproduction, migration and labour control regimes: understanding Filipino crew experiences in the UK fishing fleet

The notion of a labour control regime provides a conceptual framework for understanding the web of actors, institutions and norms that shape disciplinary mechanisms in the labour process. While labour regime approaches have drawn in multiple scales and diverse processes, this paper argues that international migration, and social reproduction in migrant source areas, must also be understood as part of the regime. Focusing on the case of Filipino migrants in the UK fishing industry, we use qualitative interviews conducted in the port of Fraserburgh, Scotland, and a migrant sending community in the province of Cebu, Philippines. We argue that the reproductive processes of workers’ lives in their home communities are an important underpinning of the labour regime they participate in when working on contracts overseas. We identify three sets of reproductive processes in particular: the trajectories of household poverty and debt that propel labour migration; the socialisation and social networks, as well as zones of recuperation, provided by home communities; and, the long-term temporalities of previous investments in fishery migration, as well as future aspirations for financial stability and intergenerational social mobility. While reproductive spaces and processes are not controlling mechanisms in themselves, they do represent an important part of the labour regime and they begin to explain migrant fishers’ forbearance in the face of a disciplinary labour regime.

Regional variation in intergenerational social mobility in Britain.

We present the first comprehensive set of estimates of variation in intergenerational social mobility across regions of Great Britain using data from the UK Labour Force Survey. Unlike the Social Mobility Index produced by the Social Mobility Commission, we focus directly on variation in measures of intergenerational social class mobility between the regions in which individuals were brought up. We define regions using the NUTS classification and we consider three levels, from 11 large NUTS1 regions, to 168 NUTS3 regions, across England, Wales, and Scotland. We investigate whether it is possible to form an index of social mobility from these measures and we address a neglected question: how much does the region in which someone was raised matter in comparison with the social class in which they were raised?

Does birthplace affect intergenerational social mobility of migrants in urban escalators? Evidence from China

AbstractThere is a growing body of literature on the effects of escalator regions on intergenerational social mobility (ISM) of migrants. Nevertheless, the role of migrant origins in migration outcomes remain neglected. To address this gap, this study attempts to investigate whether migrants' birthplaces continue to have an impact after they move to escalator regions and the mechanism of this impact. Using data from the 2010, 2013, and 2015 Chinese General Social Survey, our findings suggest that the effect of escalator regions on migrants' ISM varies according to the size of their birthplace. Furthermore, the birthplace effect on migrants' ISM when relocating to escalator regions is partially mediated by the birthplace effect on education. Finally, it was found that this birthplace effect varies according to dynamic human capital; migrants with high levels of dynamic human capital can overcome the birthplace effect after relocating to escalator regions.

Educational Status as a Mediator of Intergenerational Social Mobility in Europe: A Positional Analysis Approach

This paper investigates the transmission of educational attainment from parents to offspring as a mediator of intergenerational class mobility in Europe. The study covers the last two decades with data drawn from a cross-national large-scale sample survey, namely the European Social Survey (ESS), for the years 2002–2018. Interest has focused on the question of the persistence of inequality of educational opportunities by examining the attainment of nominal levels of education and the association between the educational attainment of the parent with the highest level of education and their descendants. The study also covers new trends in social mobility that consider education as a “positional good”, and a novel method of incorporating educational expansion into the transition probabilities is proposed, providing answers to whether the rising accessibility of educational qualifications attenuates the association between social origin and educational attainment. Therefore, the concept of positionality is taken into account in the estimation of intergenerational transition probabilities, and to complement the analysis, mobility measures are provided for both methods, nominal and positional. The proposed positional method is validated through a correlation analysis between the upward mobility scores (nominal and positional) with the Education Expansion Index (EEI) for the respective years. The upward mobility scores estimated via the positional method are more highly correlated with the EEI for all years, indicating a better alignment with the broader trends in educational participation and achievement.

Where do opportunity beliefs come from? Implications of intergenerational social mobility for beliefs about the distribution system in China

People’s understanding of the drivers of inequality is a function of their position in the social structure. Nevertheless, the ways in which intergenerational social mobility is associated with opportunity beliefs remain under researched. Recent findings in cultural sociology suggest that individuals seldom update their beliefs, and that settled dispositions lead people to reproduce their beliefs in their adulthood. This study used a probabilistic and representative survey of Chinese citizens to explore how intergenerational social mobility relates to opportunity beliefs. China presents an interesting context to explore this question, since Chinese society is considered to be highly unequal yet highly tolerant of social inequalities. Our results indicate a U-shaped relationship between social class and opportunity beliefs. The upper class and farmers exhibit stronger meritocratic beliefs than middle-classes. Moreover, upwardly and downwardly mobile individuals show greater weights for origin and destination, respectively. Thus, opportunity beliefs are explained by the social class where they rank lower. These findings suggest that when beliefs are updated through social mobility, they interact with the mobility trajectory. In addition, the stronger meritocratic beliefs of the farmers’ class and the greater weight of social origin for upwardly mobile individuals could help explain the dormant social volcano in China.

Intergenerational Social Mobility Among the Children of Immigrants in Western Europe: Between Socioeconomic Assimilation and Disadvantage

Intergenerational Social Mobility Among the Children of Immigrants in Western Europe: Between Socioeconomic Assimilation and Disadvantage

Intergenerational Social Mobility, Brain Structure, and Cognitive Trajectory: Findings from the Whitehall II Study

AbstractBackgroundPrevious studies on the effects of intergenerational social mobility on cognitive outcomes were not consistent, additionally, underlining brain anatomical variation is unclear. In the present study, we aim to examine the associations of social mobility with brain structure and cognitive trajectories in older adults.MethodThe study included 771 participants, ages 69.8 ±5.2 years, of the Whitehall II ‐ MRI substudy (2012‐2016) with data on their father’s occupation, their own occupation in mid‐life, lifestyle (smoking, drinking, physical activity, social activity, sleep disturbances, auditory difficulty, depression, obesity, hypertension), neuroimaging (T1 structural MRI) and cognitive abilities (global cognition, crystallized cognitive ability, and fluid intelligence). Social mobility was classified into stable high social class, stable low social class, upward mobility and downward mobility group based on occupational shifts from father. We used the ANCOVA tests to assess the association of social mobility with gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT) in various brain regions, and the growth curve modeling (GCM) to evaluate its relations to cognition over 20 years, adjusting for social lifestyle covariates and associated GMV/CT regions identified above.ResultSocial mobility was significantly related to 48 out of the 136 regions of GMV across the frontal lobe, limbic lobe, and temporal lobe; and to 4 out of the 68 regions of CT at the whole‐brain level. Stable high social class preserved the largest GMV and CT value; pair‐wise results suggest upward mobility preserved a larger GMV value than the downward mobility group (average diff. in cm3: 0.121, P<0.05); and similarly a larger CT value (average diff. in cm:0.029, P = 0.051). In GCMs, stable high social class (ref. downward mobility) had a higher entry score of fluid intelligence (b = 2.617, P<0.05), all other comparisons including the entry score and decline rate of cognitive abilities were non‐significant.ConclusionOur results suggest a lack of direct association between social mobility and trajectories of global cognition and crystallized cognitive ability; instead, an indirect effect through preserving the value of brain GMV and CT may occur. Additionally, an adverse causal relationship between social mobility and fluid intelligence might happen.

Intergenerational Social Mobility, Brain Structure, and Cognitive Trajectory: Findings from the Whitehall II Study

AbstractBackgroundPrevious studies on the effects of intergenerational social mobility on cognitive outcomes were not consistent, additionally, underlining brain anatomical variation is unclear. In the present study, we aim to examine the associations of social mobility with brain structure and cognitive trajectories in older adults.MethodsThe study included 771 participants, ages 69.8 ±5.2 years, of the Whitehall II ‐ MRI substudy (2012‐2016) with data on their father’s occupation, their own occupation in mid‐life, lifestyle (smoking, drinking, physical activity, social activity, sleep disturbances, auditory difficulty, depression, obesity, hypertension), neuroimaging (T1 structural MRI) and cognitive abilities (global cognition, crystallized cognitive ability, and fluid intelligence). Social mobility was classified into stable high social class, stable low social class, upward mobility and downward mobility group based on occupational shifts from father. We used the ANCOVA tests to assess the association of social mobility with gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT) in various brain regions, and the growth curve modeling (GCM) to evaluate its relations to cognition over 20 years, adjusting for social lifestyle covariates and associated GMV/CT regions identified above.ResultsSocial mobility was significantly related to 48 out of the 136 regions of GMV across the frontal lobe, limbic lobe, and temporal lobe; and to 4 out of the 68 regions of CT at the whole‐brain level. Stable high social class preserved the largest GMV and CT value; pair‐wise results suggest upward mobility preserved a larger GMV value than the downward mobility group (average diff. in cm3: 0.121, P<0.05); and similarly a larger CT value (average diff. in cm:0.029, P = 0.051). In GCMs, stable high social class (ref. downward mobility) had a higher entry score of fluid intelligence (b = 2.617, P<0.05), all other comparisons including the entry score and decline rate of cognitive abilities were non‐significant.ConclusionsOur results suggest a lack of direct association between social mobility and trajectories of global cognition and crystallized cognitive ability; instead, an indirect effect through preserving the value of brain GMV and CT may occur. Additionally, an adverse causal relationship between social mobility and fluid intelligence might happen.

Structure of Labor: Toward a New Theory of Community and Economic Development

Abstract In the United States, the rise in income inequality and downward intergenerational social mobility since the 1970s represent twin problems facing community and economic development today. This paper proposes a Structure of Labor theory to apply at the local and regional level to address these development challenges. The objective is to provide a simple local approach to development that maximizes upward economic mobility and enables individuals and communities to achieve their development goals in the 21st century development landscape of the United States. The proposed theory fuses free-enterprise principles with state-planned dirigiste efforts to maximize the best of both theoretical perspectives. After reviewing pertinent literature and articulating the Structure of Labor theory, the latter sections of the paper explicate its implications for community and economic development practice.

Historical evolution of intergenerational class mobility and educational effects in urban Argentina: 1960–2017

The Argentinean case –given an early modernization and the singularity of its reversal of development- is instructive about the role of education on intergenerational class mobility. We propose a wide historical analysis of time variations in intergenerational class mobility and the role of education over different periods in urban Argentina –specifically in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, from 1960 to 2017. This is the first time a long-term social mobility study has been conducted in Argentina. We analyse intergenerational social mobility according to EGP class scheme, using absolute rates, log-linear models, and long-term counterfactual analysis. Results show a social fluidity process for men but not for women. The counterfactual analysis exhibits that most social fluidity among men was due to a reduction in the direct class origin-class destination effect. No evidence of effects of educational expansion or educational equalization is observed. This presence of moderate social fluidity has not been linked to a modernization process which expands vertical upward mobility. Instead, it took place in a context of deindustrialization and the decline of the skilled working class.

Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

AbstractObjectivePhysical attractiveness is often studied in relation to various life outcomes, but there is a lack of research on its links to intergenerational educational, occupational, and income mobility. Individuals may use physical attractiveness as one of the channels for experiencing upward or avoiding downward social mobility.MethodsUsing data about 11,583 individuals from the United States National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we contribute to the existing scholarship by investigating if physical attractiveness, assessed when individuals are around 15 years old, is an important predictor of intergenerational social mobility measured after 20 years.ResultsWe find that physical attractiveness matters both for males’ and females’ intergenerational social mobility outcomes, but it is more important for males, even when childhood characteristics, such as various aspects of parental socioeconomic position, individuals’ health, a proxy for IQ, neighborhood conditions, and interviewers’ fixed effects, are accounted for using imputed data for observations with missing information. Across three measures of social mobility—education, occupation, and income—physically attractive males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness.ConclusionPhysical attractiveness is an independent predictor of intergenerational social mobility outcomes regarding individuals’ educational, occupational, and income attainment.

Revisiting the power of future expectations and educational path dependencies

Individuals from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and those with loftier future expectations typically have higher educational attainment. However, it is important to understand just how consequential future expectations are for educational attainment independent of socioeconomic origins—because these expectations might enable intergenerational social mobility. Moreover, it is unclear whether institutional structures moderate the influences of socioeconomic origins and future expectations on educational attainment. I address these questions by analyzing educational attainment as it relates to transitions in a system that offers multiple educational tracks. Using data from a 15-year longitudinal study conducted in Switzerland (N = 4986), I analyze transitions from lower- to upper-secondary education (academic vs. vocational tracks) and from there to university. Path models reveal that both socioeconomic origins and future expectations are significantly associated with individuals’ probability of moving along academic paths and into university, but future expectations have a strong unique predictive power even when controlling for socioeconomic origins. However, because the education system partially channels educational trajectories along distinct educational tracks, it minimizes the beneficial effect of future expectations on educational attainment and—by extension—intergenerational social mobility. I conclude that socioeconomic advantage and optimistic future expectations may only shape educational attainment to the extent that institutional opportunity structures allow such resources to take effect.

Born in a tour guide’s family: how can tourism employment fuel intergenerational social mobility?

ABSTRACT Studying social mobility can help understand societal development and changes, but it is lacking in nowadays tourism research. Focusing on tour guides, the present paper concerns how tourism employment affects intergenerational social mobility. We interviewed 22 tour guide families in Wulingyuan, China, where tourism has been the main economic driver for over 40 years. Drawing on the concept of capital with thematic analysis, we found that tour guide as a job (1) enables household economic growth (2) enlarges household social capital with networks of tourism associates and valuable customers, (3) cultivates individual cultural capital growth through at-work knowledge acquisition, skill development, and vision expansion, and (4) jointly improves individual symbolic capital in mianzi accumulation (higher social status). Some of the capital can be transferred to their offspring, which fosters an upward intergenerational social mobile trend. The key to successful transfer is parenting. The present study contributes to studies of tourism development and societal growth, highlights the advantages of frontline tourism jobs in promoting long-term growth for both the practitioners and their families, and pinpoints critical factors behind such long-term growth. Theoretical, practical and policy implications are accordingly discussed.