scholarly journals Is Social Mobility Really Declining? Intergenerational Class Mobility in Britain in the 1990s and the 2000s

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaojun Li ◽  
Fiona Devine
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Time Period ◽  
General Household Survey

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on social mobility in contemporary Britain among economists and sociologists. Using the 1991 British Household Panel Survey and the 2005 General Household Survey, we focus on the mobility trajectories of male and female respondents aged 25-59. In terms of absolute mobility, we find somewhat unfavourable trends in upward mobility for men although long-term mobility from the working class into salariat positions is still in evidence. An increase in downward mobility is clearly evident. In relation to women, we find favourable trends in upward mobility and unchanging downward mobility over the fourteen-year time period. With regard to relative mobility, we find signs of greater fluidity in the overall pattern and declining advantages of the higher salariat origin for both men and women. We consider these findings in relation to the public debate on social mobility and the academic response and we note the different preoccupations of participants in the debate. We conclude by suggesting that the interdisciplinary debate between economists and sociologists has been fruitful although a recognition of similarities, and not simply differences in position, pushes knowledge and understanding forward.

scholarly journals Education and Intergenerational Social Mobility in Europe and the United States

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Social Background ◽  
The United States ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
The Social

This book is about the role of education in shaping rates and patterns of intergenerational social mobility among men and women during the twentieth century. It examines intergenerational class mobility in the United States and seven European countries during this period. Class mobility compares the social class position of men and women with the class of the family they were born into. Mobility trends have been similar in all these countries, with increasing upward mobility among people born up to about 1950 and increasing downward mobility for those born later. The major driver of upward mobility was the massive changes in the occupational structure that took place in the thirty years after the end of World War II. Education was also important in promoting greater openness, not only through the growth of higher education, but also because, in many cases, the relationship between social background and educational attainment weakened.

Implementation of the Three Rs in Biomedical Research —Has the Turn of the Century Turned the Tide?

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoko Obora ◽  
Tsutomu Kurosawa
Keyword(s):  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Nature Medicine ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Laboratory Animals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Journal Editors ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Large Fluctuations ◽  
The Three Rs

There has been increasing pressure from the public against animal experimentation for testing and research purposes. The Three Rs ( replacement, reduction, and refinement) principle is thought to be a key foundation concept in optimising the welfare of animals used in experiments. This retrospective study attempts to investigate the transition of the Three Rs in biomedical research through a review of articles published in Nature Medicine. We categorised all of the articles published in Nature Medicine from 1998 to 2003, on the basis of the pain and distress of the animals used in the experiments featured in the analysed article. We found there were no large fluctuations in the distribution of these categories over this time period. We also examined each article for the presence of a statement relating to the humane use of laboratory animals, and found that the number of articles which included such a statement dramatically increased in 2002. Over the years studied, there was a decreasing trend in the total number of animal types used for the experiments in the articles. Our results suggest that: a) more encouragement by journal editors might improve the attitude of scientists in terms of animal welfare; and b) the progress of replacement appears to be a more long-term effort in the field of biomedical research.

scholarly journals Sick leave absence and the relationship between intra-generational social mobility and mortality: health selection in Sweden

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunnee Billingsley
Keyword(s):  
Sickness Absence ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Poor Health ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Health Selection ◽  
Average Marginal Effects ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Related Mortality

Abstract Background Poor health could influence how individuals are sorted into occupational classes. Health selection has therefore been considered a potential modifier to the mortality class gradient through differences in social mobility. Direct health selection in particular may operate in the short-term as poor health may lead to reduced work hours or achievement, downward social mobility, unemployment or restricted upward mobility, and death. In this study, the relationship between social mobility and mortality (all-cause, cancer-related, cardiovascular disease-related (CVD), and suicide) is explored when the relationship is adjusted for poor health. Methods Using Swedish register data (1996–2012) and discrete time event-history analysis, odds ratios and average marginal effects (AME) of social mobility and unemployment on mortality are observed before and after accounting for sickness absence in the previous year. Results After adjusting for sickness absence, all-cause mortality remained lower for men after upward mobility in comparison to not being mobile (OR 0.82, AME -0.0003, CI − 0.0003 to − 0.0002). Similarly, upward mobility continued to be associated with lower cancer-related mortality for men (OR 0.85, AME -0.00008, CI − 0.00002 to − 0.0002), CVD-related mortality for men (OR 0.76, AME -0.0001, CI − 0.00006 to − 0.0002) and suicide for women (OR 0.67, AME -0.00002, CI − 0.000002 to − 0.00003). The relationship between unemployment and mortality also persisted across most causes of death for both men and women after controlling for previous sickness absence. In contrast, adjusting for sickness absence renders the relationship between downward mobility and cancer-related mortality not statistically different from the non-mobile. Conclusions Health selection plays a role in how downward mobility is linked to cancer related deaths. It additionally accounts for a portion of why upward mobility is associated with lower mortality. That health selection plays a role in how social mobility and mortality are related may be unexpected in a context with strong job protection. Job protection does not, however, equalize opportunities for upward mobility, which may be limited for those who have been ill. Because intra-generational upward mobility and mortality remained related after adjusting for sickness absence, other important mechanisms such as indirect selection or social causation should be explored.

Gatekeeping Stories of Dissent and Mobility

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Rafael Pérez-Torres
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
The Us ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
And Control

Abstract Three recent studies meditate on the significance of narratives by and about racial subjects and exiled radicals in an age of increased social surveillance and control. Elda María Román in Race and Upward Mobility (2017) analyzes popular stories about racially or ethnically identified characters who, seeking upward social mobility, face a quandary. They try to sustain an empowering sense of racial affiliation while seeking to gain upward social and class mobility. Permissible Narratives (2017) by Christopher González analyzes how the form taken by narratives about racial and class affiliation serves to mark ethnic identification. Latinx literary texts that do not follow prescribed forms deliberately undo aesthetic norms and thus enact a kind of transgressive Latinidad. Where the US forms the sociocultural parameters of these two books, Teresa V. Longo’s Visible Dissent (2018) considers the sociocultural interchanges between the US and Latin American writers who articulate a literature of opposition, resistance, and dissent against repressive forms of social and political control. Each study weighs a hope for transformative social change against the power of the efficient, impersonal, even brutal management that comprises modernity.

Class Status and Social Mobility on Tobacco Smoking in Post-Reform China Between 1991 and 2011

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 2188-2195
Author(s):  
Xiaozhao Yousef Yang
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Tobacco Smoking ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Social Gradient ◽  
Occupational Prestige ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Heavy Smoking ◽  
Class Weight ◽  
Class Status

Abstract Introduction There is growing attention to social mobility’s impact on tobacco use, but few studies have differentiated the two conceptually distinct mechanisms through which changes in social class can affect tobacco smoking: the class status effect and the mobility effect. Aims and Methods I applied Diagonal Reference Modeling to smoking and heavy smoking among respondents of the 1991 China Health and Nutrition Survey who were revisited two decades later in 2011 (n = 3841, 49% male, baseline mean age was 38 years). I divided the sample into six social classes (non-employment, self-employed, owners, workers, farmers, and retirees) and measured social mobility by changes in income and occupational prestige. Results About 61.7% of men were smokers and those from the classes of workers, owners, and self-employees consumed more cigarettes compared to the unemployed, but women smokers (3.7%) tend to be from the lower classes (unemployed and farmers). Controlling for social class, each 1000 Yuan increase in annual income led to smoking 0.03 more cigarettes (p < .05) and 1% increase (p < .05) in the likelihood of heavy smoking among men, but the income effect is null for women. Upwardly mobile men (a 10-points surge in occupational prestige) smoked like their destination class (weight = 78%), whereas men with downward mobility were more similar to peers in the original class (weight = 60%). Conclusions Contrary to the social gradient in smoking in other industrial countries, higher class status and upward mobility are each associated with more smoking among Chinese men, but not among women. Implications Tobacco control policies should prioritize male smoking at workplaces and the instrumental purposes of using tobacco as gifts and social lubricant. Taxation may counter the surge in smoking brought by individuals’ income increase after upward mobility. Caution should be paid to women joining the similar social gradient in smoking as they gain foothold in the labor market.

scholarly journals Education and intergenerational social mobility in the US and four European countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Breen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Educational Expansion ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Fluidity ◽  
Second World

Abstract I draw on the findings of a recently completed comparative research project to address the question: how did intergenerational social mobility change over cohorts of men and women born in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and what role, if any, did education play in this? The countries studied are the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Notwithstanding the differences between them, by and large they present the same picture. Rates of upward mobility increased among cohorts born in the second quarter of the century and then declined among those born later. Among earlier born cohorts, social fluidity increased (that is, the association between the class a person was born into and the class he or she came to occupy as an adult declined) and then remained unchanged for those born after mid-century. The association between class origins and educational attainment followed much the same trend as social fluidity. This suggests that growing equalization in education may have contributed to the increase in social fluidity. In our analyses we find that this is so, but educational expansion also led to greater fluidity in some countries. There is also a strong link between upward mobility and social fluidity. Upward mobility was mostly driven by the expansion of higher-level white-collar jobs, especially in the 30 years after the end of the Second World War. This facilitated social fluidity because people from working class and farming origins could move into the service or salariat classes without reducing the rate at which children born into those classes could remain there. Educational expansion, educational equalization, and rapid structural change in the economies of the US and Europe all contributed to greater social fluidity among people born in the second quarter of the twentieth century. For people born after mid-century, rates of downward mobility have increased: however, despite the lack of further educational equalization and less pronounced structural change, social fluidity has remained unchanged.

The Allure and Costs of Capability

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-164
Author(s):  
Poulami Roychowdhury
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

Chapter 11 analyzes the costs and benefits of women’s “capability.” On the one hand, women who tried to be “capable” became empowered in concrete ways. They gained self-confidence, feeling psychologically better than they had after experiencing abuse. Some of them experienced important forms of social mobility, acquiring stable jobs and respect from friends and neighbors. Some became members of the public sphere, able to navigate government offices, occupy public space, and lead their own organizational efforts. On the other hand, by trying to be “capable,” women also experienced real uncertainty and risks. They became overworked, overwhelmed, lonely, and physically endangered. Trying to be capable had long-term negative effects on women’s health, mental stability, and, for some, the very desire to survive.

scholarly journals Is London Really the Engine-Room? Migration, Opportunity Hoarding and Regional Social Mobility in the UK

2017 ◽  
Vol 240 ◽  
pp. R58-R72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Lindsey Macmillan
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Engine Room ◽  
The Uk ◽  
First Time ◽  
Domestic Migrants

In this paper we explore for the first time regional differences in the patterning of occupational social mobility in the UK. Drawing on data from Understanding Society (US), supported by the Labour Force Survey (LFS), we examine how rates of absolute and relative intergenerational occupational mobility vary across 19 regions of England, Scotland and Wales. Our findings somewhat problematise the dominant policy narrative on regional social mobility, which presents London as the national ‘engine-room’ of social mobility. In contrast, we find that those currently living in Inner London have experienced the lowest regional rate of absolute upward mobility, the highest regional rate of downward mobility, and a comparatively low rate of relative upward mobility into professional and managerial occupations. This stands in stark contrast to Merseyside and particularly Tyne and Wear where rates of both absolute and relative upward mobility are high, and downward mobility is low. We then examine this Inner London effect further, finding that it is driven in part by two dimensions of migration. First, among international migrants, we find strikingly low rates of upward mobility and high rates of downward mobility. Second, among domestic migrants, we find a striking overrepresentation of those from professional and managerial backgrounds. These privileged domestic migrants, our results indicate, are less likely to experience downward mobility than those from similar backgrounds elsewhere in the country. This may be partly explained by higher educational qualifications, but may also be indicative of a glass floor or opportunity hoarding.

scholarly journals Better times to come? Intergenerational class mobility of labour market entrants in Germany and the UK since the 1950s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nhat An Trinh ◽  
Erzsebet Bukodi
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Relative Mobility ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Social Fluidity

This study examines over-time trends in intergenerational class mobility based on cohorts of labour market entrants in Germany and the UK since the 1950s. We calculate absolute and relative mobility rates, separately for men and women, using the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2016), the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2016), and the UK Labour Force Survey (2014-2017). Regarding absolute mobility, we find marked country differences in upward and downward rates. In Germany, downward mobility decreased, while upward mobility rose. In the UK, downward mobility increased, while upward mobility declined. We provide evidence that these differences can be linked to contrasting changes in the distribution of origin and destination classes. Regarding relative mobility, striking country similarities appear. For both countries, we observe increases in social fluidity for respondents entering the labour market during the 1950s and 1960s that cease to continue for cohorts thereafter. Comparisons between adjacent cohorts do not provide evidence that social fluidity follows cyclical developments of the economy or shorter-term volatilities in the labour market.

scholarly journals Intragenerational Social Mobility and Wellbeing in Great Britain. A Biomarker Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Präg ◽  
Nina-Sophie Fritsch ◽  
Lindsay Richards
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Allostatic Load ◽  
Occupational Class ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Null Results ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Self Rated Health ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
The Uk

Social theory has long predicted that social mobility, in particular downward social mobility, is detrimental to the wellbeing of individuals. Dissociative and ‘falling from grace’ theories suggest that mobility is stressful due to the weakening of social ties, feelings of alienation, and loss of status. In light of these theories, it is a puzzle that the majority of quantitative studies in this area have shown null results. Our approach to resolve the puzzle is twofold. First, we argue for a broader conception of the mobility process than is often used and thus focus on intragenerational occupational class mobility rather than restricting ourselves to the more commonly studied intergenerational mobility. Second, we argue that self-reported measures may be biased by habituation (or ‘entrenched deprivation’). Using nurse-collected health and biomarker data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS, 2010–12, N = 4,123), we derive a measure of allostatic load as an objective gauge of physiological ‘wear and tear,’ and compare patterns of mobility effects with self-reports of health using diagonal reference models. Our findings indicate a strong class gradient in both allostatic load and self-rated health, and that both first and current job matter for current wellbeing outcomes. However, in terms of the effects of mobility itself, we find that intragenerational social mobility is consequential for allostatic load, but not for self-rated health. Downward mobility is detrimental and upward mobility beneficial for wellbeing as assessed by allostatic load. Thus, these findings do not support the idea of generalized stress from dissociation, but they do support the ‘falling from grace’ hypothesis of negative downward mobility effects. Our findings have a further implication, namely that the differences in mobility effects between the objective and subjective outcome infer the presence of entrenched deprivation. Null results in studies of self-rated outcomes may therefore be a methodological artifact, rather than an outright rejection of decades-old social theory.

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