Vertical and Nonvertical Effects in Class Mobility: Cross-National Variations

Occupational class and health are closely linked, however the health consequences of intergenerational social class mobility have not yet been systematically explored. A long tradition of research on individuals’ class mobility and health reports mixed or no effects, however cross-national differences have rarely been tested comprehensively. Further, recent studies show that intergenerational social class mobility at the societal level is beneficial for population health. Using representative survey data from 30 European countries (N = 159,591), we present the first study to investigate the role that intergenerational class mobility both at the individual and societal level play for self-rated health. We find that, apart from four post-communist countries, neither downward nor upward mobility is significantly and systematically related to poor self-rated health. There is also no association between societal-level social mobility and the prevalence of poor self-rated health across the 30 societies. Results are robust to alternative specifications and suggest that individuals’ own social class and partially their parents’ social class are primary explanations of health rather than their mobility experiences between origins and destinations.

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‘Primary’ Factors in Intergenerational Class Mobility in Europe: Results from the Application of a Topological Model

European Sociological Review ◽

10.1093/esr/jcaa028 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Erzsébet Bukodi ◽

John H Goldthorpe

Keyword(s):

Past Research ◽

Topological Model ◽

Specific Kind ◽

Class Hierarchy ◽

Class Mobility ◽

Relative Class ◽

Secondary Factor ◽

Mobility Tables ◽

Cross National

Abstract There is little consensus in past research regarding the sources of cross-national variation in relative rates of intergenerational class mobility. We argue for the importance of distinguishing between ‘primary’ factors that explain why inequalities in relative chances of mobility exist in the first place, and ‘secondary’ factors that explain variation in these chances. Our main aim is to identify primary factors. We follow Erikson and Goldthorpe in developing a topological model of the endogenous mobility regime which we then apply to class mobility tables for 30 European nations. The model claims that inequalities in relative class mobility chances derive from three kinds of effect: those of class hierarchy, class inheritance and status affinity. When applied to all nations together, the model accounts for the very large part of the total association between class origins and destinations. Clear differences, however, show up between the mobility regimes of men and of women: gender is a secondary factor. When the model is applied separately to nations in the high fluidity and low fluidity sets that we distinguish, we find that the effects of the primary factors identified by our model strengthen in a consistent way from the former set to the latter, although it seems likely that different secondary factors may operate in offsetting ways. Finally, when the model is applied to the groups of nations that we distinguish within the high and low fluidity sets, few differences in the strengths of the various effects show up, but those that do are highly concentrated in post-socialist nations and can be related to secondary factors of a specific kind associated with particular features of their transitions to some form of capitalist democracy.

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