Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups in social position over time.[1][2] It may refer to classes, ethnic groups, or entire nations, and may measure health status, literacy, or education — but more commonly it refers to individuals or families, and their change in income.[1] It also typically refers to vertical mobility—movement of individuals or groups up (or down) from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marriage; but can also refer to horizontal mobility—movement from one position to another within the same social level. Social mobility can be the change in status between someone (or a group) and their parents/previous family generations ("inter-generational"); or over the change during one's lifetime ("intra-generational").[3] It can be "absolute"—i.e. total amount of movement of people between classes, usually over one generation (such as when education and economic development raises the socio-economic level of a population); or "relative" -- an estimation of the chance of upward (or downward) social mobility of a member of one social class in comparison with a member from another class.[4] A higher level of intergenerational mobility is often considered praiseworthy, and the sign of greater fairness, or equality of opportunity, in a society.[5]
Mobility is enabled to a varying extent by economic capital, cultural capital (such as higher education), human capital (such as competence and effort in labour), social capital (such as support from one's social network), physical capital (such as ownership of tools, or the 'means of production'), and symbolic capital (such as the worth of an official title, status class, celebrity, etc.).
In western modern states, examples of policy issues are: taxation, welfare, education and public transport each exercising great influence over the state. In other societies religious affiliation, caste membership, or geographical location may be of central importance. The extent to which a nation is open and meritocratic is influential, but an arbitrary system of promotion can also lead to mobility: a society in which traditional or religious caste systems dominate is unlikely to present the opportunity for social mobility. The term is used in both sociology and economics.
Intra-generational mobility ("within" a generation) is defined as change in social status over a single life-time. Inter-generational mobility ("across" generations) is defined as changes in social status that occur from the parents' to the children's generation.[6] These definitions have proven particularly useful when analyzing how social status changes from one time-period to another, and if a person's parents' social status influences that of their own. Sociologists usually focus on intergenerational mobility because it is easier to depict changes across generations rather than within one. This information helps sociologists determine whether social and economic inequality and equal opportunity in a culture changes over time.
Intra-generational mobility occurs when a person strives to change his or her own social standing. In some societies, this type of change is easier than in others. In social systems where people are divided into castes or ethnic groups, social mobility is limited. Any persons born into a certain caste or ethnic group will remain a member of that group for their entire life. However, in cultures where social standing is determined by factors that can change across generations, such as merit, education, skills, abilities, actions or wealth, people can move up and down the social ladder.
Intra-generational mobility can move a person either higher or lower in the social ladder. If a person starts at a low level, they may improve their status by (for example) working hard, getting a better job, or becoming more culturally sound,( a value judgement expressing the dominant values of that culture) to name a few possible approaches. Pierre Bourdieu describes three types of capital that place a person in a certain social category. These are economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital. Economic capital is command over economic resources such as money and assets. Social capital is resources one achieves based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence, and support from other people. Cultural capital is any advantage a person has that gives them a higher status in society, such as education, skills, and any other form of knowledge. Usually, people with all three types of capital have a high status in society.
Inter-generational mobility occurs across generations. This mobility is both merit- and non-merit-based. Ability and hard work affect social mobility, but so do race, gender, luck, and parents' wealth,. Parents also help children make important connections with people in order to expand their social network. Parents who can create social capital for their children tend to increase their children's social mobility.[7]
Research on American mobility published in 2006 and based on collecting data on the economic mobility of families across generations looked at the probability of reaching a particular income-distribution with regard to where their parents were ranked. The study found that 42 percent of those whose parents were in the bottom quintile ended up in the bottom quintile themselves, 23 percent of them ended in the second quintile, 19 percent in the middle quintile, 11 percent in the fourth quintile and 6 percent in the top quintile.[8] These data indicate the difficulty of upward intergenerational mobility. There is more intergenerational mobility in Australia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Spain, France, and Canada than in th U.S. In fact, of affluent countries studied, only Britain and Italy have lower intergenerational mobility than the United States does (and they are basically even with the U.S.) We know less about the long-term mobility of the top 1 percent, but all indications are that people in this rarefied group usually don’t drop very far down the ladder.[9]
Annette Lareau disusses child-raising in her book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (2003). She describes two different ways to raise children: concerted cultivation and natural growth:
- Concerted cultivation, normally used by middle-class families, incorporates scheduling many structured, organized activities for the child. Such children learn to use their language to reason with parents and other adults, and they often adopt a sense of entitlement.
- Natural growth is almost the exact opposite of concerted cultivation. Occurring mainly in poor or working-class families, this style of childrearing does not include organized activities, and there is a clear division between the adult and the child. Children usually spend large amounts of their day creating their own activities, and they hardly ever speak with adults. In fact, adults use language in order to direct or order the children, never to negotiate with them.
These two different types of childrearing can affect inter-generational mobility. Children who grow up with a concerted cultivation style of childrearing learn from their parents how to talk with adults as equals and negotiate to get favorable outcomes in any situation. This skill helps them create powerful social networks, which can improve their social standing. Children with natural growth accomplishment tend to have a more difficult time improving their social standing. They lack the social skills and sense of entitlement that children raised with the concerted cultivation method have, and therefore are less likely to acquire good jobs (and therefore, improve their social standing). Children who have been raised with natural growth do learn to comply with authority figures, instead of arguing with them, which gives them an advantage over concerted cultivated children in certain fields of employment. However, those are generally the entry-level fields (which pay people to follow orders and not to think) and are therefore the lower-paying ones, whereas the middle-class concertedly cultivated children's reasoning skills aid them in attaining the higher-paying, higher-prestige white-collar jobs.
Absolute mobility measures whether (and by how much) living standards in a society have increased—often measured by what percentage of people have higher incomes than their parents. Relative mobility refers to how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution.[10] So, for example, if a person’s income increases from $32,000 at the beginning of their career to $36,000 a decade later, whereas most other people who began their work life around the same time experienced a larger increase, that person has experienced upward absolute mobility but downward relative mobility.
The more absolute mobility there is, the better off the population is than their parents, and their children will consequently be better off than them.[11] Relative mobility refers to the fluidity of a society. If your family is poor, you have a decent chance of moving up the relative income ladder.[11] Because relative mobility depends on one’s place in the distribution, it is a zero-sum phenomenon.[11] In other words, if one person moves up in relative terms, another by definition must have moved down. In contrast, absolute mobility is not zero-sum.
Although both absolute and relative mobility are both forms of intragenerational mobility, these two have very little to do with each other. High absolute mobility rates can co-exist with highly unequal relative mobility chances. Thus, you can have an economy with a lot of absolute mobility, and little relative mobility or an economy with a lot of relative mobility, and little absolute mobility. Social mobility is an act of moving from one social class to another. The amount of movement up and down the class structure would indicate the extent of social mobility prevalent in the society. The social mobility is greatly influenced by the level of openness of the society. An open society is the one where people attain their status primarily by their own efforts.
The extent of mobility may be taken as an index of meritocracy of a society indicating how far talented individuals born into lower strata can move up the socio-economic ladder; and vice versa, how far lazy rich people move down the ladder. In this respect, social mobility is an important political issue, particularly in countries committed to a liberal vision of equal opportunity for all citizens. In this perspective industrial societies are mostly open societies exhibiting high social mobility. Compared with them, pre-industrial societies have mostly been found to be closed societies where there has been low social mobility. People in such societies have been confined to their ancestral occupations, and their social status has mostly been prescribed.
The movement of people up or down the social hierarchy can be looked at either within one generation called intra-generational mobility or between generations labeled as inter-generational mobility. Intra-generational mobility consists of movement up and down the stratification system by members of a single generation (the-social class in which you began life compared with your social class at the end of your life). Inter-generational mobility consists of movement up and down the stratification system by members of successive generations of a family (your social class location compared with that of your parents, for example). Comparison is usually made between social class status of son and father. Mobility is functional. Open societies provide opportunities to their members for the development of their talents and working toward their individual fulfillment. At the same time a person can select the best person for doing a particular job
Social mobility can be classified as:
- Vertical mobility: The movement of individuals and groups up or down the socioeconomic scale. Those who gain in property, income, status, and position are said to be upwardly mobile, while those who move in the opposite direction are downwardly mobile.
- Horizontal mobility: The movement of individuals and groups in similar socio-economic positions, which may be in different work situations. This may involve change in occupation or remaining in the same occupation but in a different organization, or may be in the same organization but at a different location.
- Lateral mobility: It is a geographical movement between neighborhoods, towns or regions. In modern societies there is a great deal of geographical mobility.[citation needed] Lateral mobility is often combined with vertical as well as horizontal mobility.
Achieved status is a position gained based on merit, or achievement (used in an open system). An open system describes a society with mobility between different social classes. Individuals can move up or down in the social rankings; this is unlike closed systems, where individuals are set in one social position for life despite their achievements. Ascribed status is a position based on who a person is, not what they can do (used in a closed system). When this ascriptive status rule is used (Medieval Europe), people are placed in a position based on personal traits beyond their control. Mobility is much more frequent in countries that use achievement as the basis for status. However, societies differ in the amount of mobility that occurs due to the direction of structural changes in their overall status systems. The process by which an individual alters the ascribed social status of their parents into an achieved social status for themselves is called Social Transformation.
The ability of an individual to become wealthy out of poverty does not necessarily indicate that there is social mobility in his or her society. Some societies with low or nonexistent social mobility afford free individuals opportunities to initiate enterprise and amass wealth, but wealth fails to "buy" entry into a higher social class. In feudal Japan and Confucianist China, wealthy merchants occupied the lowest ranks in society (at least in theory). In pre-revolutionary France, a nobleman, however poor, was from the "second estate" of society and thus superior, at least in theory, to a wealthy merchant (from the "third estate").
Mobility regimes can be positive and/or an negative sum. Structural mobility is mobility resulting from changes in the number and kinds of jobs available in a society. Examples: Great Depression, many job losses, the government and many people in need of major help. According to sociologist John H. Goldthorpe, social mobility is normally seen in two ways. The first being that it is a basic source of social "structuration." The second is that the extent of mobility may be a strong indicator of the balance of power and status within a society.
Structural mobility is a type of forced vertical mobility that results from a change in the distribution of statuses of within a society, owing more to changes in society itself than to individual efforts.[12] It occurs when the demand for a particular occupation reaches its maximum and more people are needed to trade-off. This means, instead of positions reaching the maximum and more people being needed, positions are dropped and someone else must step up to fill the position. When ascriptive status is in play, there is not much exchange mobility occurring.
Upward social mobility is a change in a person's social status resulting in that person rising to a higher position in their status system.[13] However, downward mobility implies a person's social status falls to a lower position in their status system.[13] A prime example of an opportunity for upward mobility nowadays is in athletics. There is an increasing number of minorities holding top executive positions in the NBA.[14] Transformative assets would also allow one to achieve a higher status in society, as they increase wealth and provide for more opportunity. A transformative asset could be a trust fund set up by family that allows one to own a nice house in a nice neighborhood, instead of renting an apartment in a run-down community. This type of move would allow the person to develop a new circle of friends of the same economic status.
Several studies have been made comparing social mobility between developed countries. One such study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?")[5][15][16] found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children. (see graph)
Notable examples of social mobility include Pierre Bérégovoy who started working at the age of 16 as a metal worker and later became Prime Minister of France, Ramsay MacDonald the illegitimate son of a farm labourer and a housemaid who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Sir Joseph Cook, an Englishman who had no schooling and worked as a coal miner at the age of nine and went on to become Prime Minister of Australia.
At least five large studies in recent years have found that vertical inter-generational mobility is lower in America than in comparable nations, belief in America as a land of opportunity not withstanding.[10]
The American Dream Report, a study of the Economic Mobility Project, found that Americans surveyed were more likely than citizens of other countries to agree with statements like “People get rewarded for intelligence and skill”, “People get rewarded for their efforts”; and less likely to agree with statements like “Coming from a wealthy family is ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ to getting ahead,” “Income differences in my country are too large” or “It is the responsibility of government to reduce differences in income.”[16] While another report found such beliefs to have gotten strong over the last few decades.[5]
Along with the aforementioned “Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?" study The Economist also stated that "evidence from social scientists suggests that American society is much `stickier` than most Americans assume. Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining."[17] A German study corroborates these results.[18] In spite of this low mobility Americans surveyed had the highest belief in meritocracy among 27 nations surveyed.[19]
Popular examples of upward social mobility from America include Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton, who were born into working-class families yet achieved high political office in adult life. Benjamin Franklin came from a modest background but became wealthy.[20] Andrew Carnegie, arrived in the U.S. as a poor immigrant and later became a steel tycoon.
Wages and earnings correlate with education. A 2009 survey of young adults[21] who worked full time [22] throughout a full year,[23] found the median income of those without a high school diploma ($21,000) was below the poverty level for a family of four ($22,050)[24] and less than half of what those with a bachelor's degree earned ($45,000).[25]
| Education and Income in the US(2009)[25] |
| Educational Attainment |
Young Adult
Median Income |
| Master's degree or higher |
$60,000 |
| Bachelor's degree |
$45,000 |
High School Diploma
(or equivalent) |
$30,000 |
No High School Diploma
(or equivalent) |
$21,000 |
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). [25] |
The difference has worsened since 1979 when the average college graduate made 38% more than the average high school graduate. By 2011 college graduates averaged made 75% more income.[26] "Mobility" to the "class" of college graduates has declined. Those born with parents who graduated from college have far better odds of graduating from college than those born to high school graduates.[27]
When examining status mobility within the American labor force, women and minorities hold jobs with less rank, authority, opportunity for advancement, and pay than men and whites (.[28][29] This concept is considered to be the "glass ceiling" effect. One explanation is seen in the networks of different genders and minorities. The more managers there are in an employees' immediate work environment, the higher their chances of interacting and spending time with high status employees. Less than half of all managers are women, whereas the vast majority of all clerical and office workers are women. Furthermore, less than fifteen percent of all managers were minorities, whereas roughly a quarter of all clerical and office employees were minorities.
With regard to women, another explanation for this "glass ceiling" effect in the American work force is due to the job-family trade off that women face compared to men. However, there is information that suggests women adjust their jobs around their family responsibilities more than men do. Taking a break from the work force tends to decrease human capital when it comes to finding a job.[30] Women are also more likely than men to take leave from their jobs to care for others rather than themselves.[31][32][33] This evidence makes employers wary of hiring and promoting women in the work force.[34]
Others have pointed out that men have statistically been willing to accept job conditions that women were not, such as working outside in extreme weather, working where you can become physically dirty on a regular basis, working more hours, etc.
According to economist George J. Borjas, intergenerational upward economic mobility among a wide variety of ethnic groups in the US averages a 5% to 10% in increase in income from the first to the second generation of immigrants. Overcoming language barriers and adjusting to the new environment and culture in American society creates barriers for new immigrants. This intergenerational mobility includes poor as well as middle income groups, although among the high income Borjas noted an equalizing tendency in income/status, whereby children of very successful immigrants tended to have lower, not higher, incomes/status than their parents.[35]
Within the United States the prison population has been steadily increasing since the early 1970s and has now surpassed two million—the highest per capita rate in the world. This boom is largely fueled by the “War on Drugs” and has created an underclass by providing a number of ways to deny one of the most important tools for social mobility, education.
- The drug war has combined with public school zero-tolerance policies to remove tens of thousands of adolescents from their public schools.
- Denial of higher education has been adopted as an additional punishment for drug offenders.
- The war on drugs siphons drug users out of society and into prison.[36]
The lack of education for convicted felons is compounded with difficulties in finding employment. These two factors contribute towards a high recidivism rate and downward social mobility.
Cultural capital, a term first coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is the process of distinguishing between the economic aspects of class and powerful cultural assets. Bourdieu found that the culture of the upper social class is oriented more toward formal reasoning and abstract thought. The lower social class is geared more towards matters of facts and the necessities of life. He also found that the environment that a person is developed in has a large effect on the social class that a person will have.
Societies which use slavery are an example of low social mobility because, for the enslaved individuals, upward mobility is practically nonexistent, and for their owners, downward mobility is practically outlawed.
Social mobility is normally discussed as "upward only", but it is a two-sided phenomenon - where there is upward mobility, there can also be relative downward mobility. If merit and fortune play a larger role in life chances than the luck of birth, and some people can manage a relative upward shift in their social status, then some people can also move downward relative to others. This is the risk that motivates people in power to increasingly devise and commission political, legal, educational, and economic mechanisms that permit them to fortify their advantages. However, by controlling that inclination, it is possible in a growing economy for there to be greater upward mobility than downward - as has been the case in Western Europe[citation needed].
Official or legally recognized class designations do not exist in modern western democracies and it is considered possible for individuals to move from poverty to wealth or political prominence within one generation. Despite this formal opportunity for social mobility, recent research suggests that Britain and particularly the United States have less social mobility than the Nordic countries and Canada. These authors state that "the idea of the US as ‘the land of opportunity’ persists; and clearly seems misplaced."[37][38][39] However social mobility is likely to be much higher in all wealthy societies that offer free secondary and tertiary education than in poorer countries that do not.
Not only does social mobility vary across types of countries, it can also change over time. Comparing the United States to the United Kingdom, there was social mobility of different degrees existing between the two countries during different historical periods. In the United States in the mid-19th century inequality was low and social mobility was high. In the late 19th century, the U.S. had much higher social mobility than in the UK, due to the common school movement and open public school system, a larger farming sector, as well as higher geographic mobility in the United States. However, during the latter half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, the difference between the social mobilities of the two countries has narrowed, as social inequality has grown in both countries, but particularly in the United States. In other words, the individual's family background is more predictive of social position today than it was in 1850.[citation needed]
In market societies like the modern United States, class and economic wealth are strongly correlated. However, in some societies, such as feudal societies transitioning to market societies, there is a reduced probability that class status and wealth overlap. Usually, though, membership in a high social class provides more opportunities for wealth and political power, and therefore economic fortune is often a lagging indicator of social class. In newly-formed societies with little or no established tradition (such as the American West in the 19th century) the reverse is true: Made wealth precipitates the elite of future generations.
Theory suggests that there is a connection between Social Psychologists' understanding of collective identity and the way sociologists conceive it. Individuals are always seeking ways to define themselves with regard to the world around them and they can do this with the meaning given to community and the concept that people are different from others because of arbitrary differences.
Boundaries could be sexual, racial, or linguistic, or they could look at other definitions of boundaries. Geographical boundaries are an example that is strongly reinforced but not as apparent without extra symbols. Sports teams are an excellent example of symbols that define geographic boundaries. When people place themselves, they must find a balance between their community or subgroup and larger communities and out-groups (which are groups that can be perceived as having a distinct difference). Scientists “have been studying the segmentation between ‘us’ and ‘them.’”
The social definition of groups creates entry and exit barriers that can help us understand the reasons why social mobility across group boundaries can be difficult. With symbols ranging from tattoos to elite prep schools, the concept of a boundary is readily apparent and seems to be instinctive. The interplay of ‘achievement’ with status and with actual economic success depends largely on the way that the in-group perceives these values. The nonparallel views of different groups at different points on the economic scale mean that advancement in some groups could be counter to the goals and directions of another group. High-income urban culture can define itself with multiple symbolic boundaries stemming from prejudice against other groups that they perceive to be of a different economic status. These actions make it difficult for others to interact with people who may be geographically very close. When groups consider themselves mutually exclusive, it is unlikely that they will worry about the well being of the others and are unwilling to share resources (In the form of social capital in this case)[40]
Kevin A. Lynch touches on the concept of geographic boundaries and their social impact, as well as ways they can be manipulated in his book Image of the City. This work addresses the visible and invisible boundaries that are created in urban environments from an urban planner's perspective. The spatial information people use to create boundaries can be as important to perception as other more culturally entrenched symbols. To use some of Lynch’s own terms, the Paths that people use dictate their flow in every day behavior, and what is accessible to them easily. Districts are large sections of the city that have some specific character; these create a means of building individual identity that is shared by those who live and work inside them, and (is) felt by those that must cross Edges for various reasons. When seeking jobs or healthcare for instance.[41]
According to Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley’s article Assessing “Neighborhood Effects”: Social Processes and New Directions in Research on the relationship between adolescent behavior and indicators of residential differentiation, “Robert Park and Ernest Burgess laid the foundation for urban sociology by defining local communities as 'natural areas' that developed as a result of competition between businesses for land use and between population groups for affordable housing.” This indicates that resources that are available to the community will largely be affected by the wealth of the population.
There is change that happens in communities however, and they evolve over time. This study suggests that longitudinal studies could observe trends in the community over time. As neighborhood dynamics change, there could be a movement of social groups into proximity with other similar groups creating a hybrid of the two cultures. Another possibility is that the groups in an area move around, but do not intermingle, and when they feel pressure that threatens their hold on an area, they could fight back at the local level, or choose to relocate to a place where economic conditions restrict entry.[42]
The benefits of having symbols that define social boundaries work to keep people from falling down as much as they can prevent others from moving up. The value of the work ethic, that is shared in many cultures, maintains an individual’s drive and prompts them to seek out and hold employment. Symbols of social status such as leadership roles are important for developing role models, and leadership models are often seen by children as bridging the more detrimental class boundaries. As shown here: “There are also cross-cultural differences in how symbolic boundaries are linked to social boundaries. The same social boundary can be coupled with different symbolic boundaries as class distinctions in Europe are tied to the symbolic boundary between high culture and popular culture.”[42]
In recent decades, new status hiearchies have emerged, leading to new opportunities for competition. India has seen a recent boom in employment, communication, distribution of goods, centralized administration, and urban living. This urbanization provides an escape from the ties of membership in rural based communities. Factors that would predetermine an individual's status are not as effective in urban areas. According to Harold Gould, the criteria for determining occupations in India are a person's skill and quality of performance rather than place of birth.
The status of any given role is based on its economic rewards and mobility. Studies have also shown that technological advances have both displaced certain groups as well as offered the chance for upward mobility. Some groups find themselves displaced by developing technology because their economic and social status have declined (ex. water carriers in parts of Northern India have been displaced by the introduction of handpumps). In other cases, individuals are finding new occupations with the opportunity for upward mobility. Most advances, however, appear to coincide with the opportunity for enhancement of social status.
In international comparisons, using the relationship between parents’ and children’s incomes as an indicator of relative mobility, data show that a number of countries including Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and France have more relative mobility than does the United States.[43] UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has famously said that trends in social mobility "are not as we would have liked".[44]
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- ^ Obstacles to social mobility weaken equal opportunities and economic growth, says OECD study, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Economics Department, 10/02/2010.
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