How can social mobility be measured

Explanations for this phenomenon include the following:. Despite the increased presence of African Americans and women in the work force over the years, women and non-whites hold jobs with less rank, authority, opportunity for advancement, and pay than men and whites.

The glass ceiling is thought to prevent women and minorities from occupying more than a very small percentage of top managerial positions. One reason for the persistence of the glass ceiling, even as explicitly discriminatory policies are eliminated, is the small proportion of high status individuals in the social networks of women and ethnic minorities. Consequently, the more likely these employees are to be drawn on for promotion.

For women, another explanation for the glass ceiling effect in the American work force is the job-family trade off. While both men and women feel that a conflict exists between work life and family life, women with children, particularly married women, are more likely to either temporarily leave the labor force or cut back on employment by using flex time, working part-time, or working only part of the year.

Statistically, men have been willing to accept job conditions that women do not, such as working outside in extreme weather, working where you can become physically dirty on a regular basis, working extra hours, and other such undesirable conditions. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Stratification, Inequality, and Social Class in the U. Search for:. Social Mobility. Social Mobility Social mobility is the movement of an individual or group from one social position to another over time.

Learning Objectives Assess how different factors facilitate social mobility. The attributes needed to move up or down the social hierarchy are particular to each society; some countries value economic gain, for example, while others prioritize religious status. Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor Economic inequality also known as the gap between rich and poor consists of disparities in the distribution of wealth and income.

Learning Objectives Discuss the causes of economic inequality. Key Takeaways Key Points Economic inequality refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries.

Inequality is most often measured using the Gini coefficient, a statistic used to demonstrate the dispersion of wealth in a group. Both the capitalist market and government interventions can increase or decrease the level of inequality in a society. Key Terms supply and demand : An economic model of price determination in a market based on the relative scarcity or abundance of goods and services.

Capitalist Market : Refers to an economic system in which supply and demand determines the cost of goods and wages for services. Open vs. Closed Stratification Systems In an open class system, people are ranked by achieved status, whereas in a closed class system, people are ranked by ascribed status.

Learning Objectives Differentiate between open and closed stratification systems. An achievement-based economic system with social mobility and relations between classes is known as an open class system.

By contrast, people in a closed class system have been confined to their ancestral occupations, and their social status has mostly been prescribed by birth. Most closed class systems are found in less industrialized countries.

Key Terms achieved status : A social status of a person that is acquired, such as being an Olympic athlete, being a criminal, or being a college professor. Types of Social Mobility Social mobility can be vertical and horizontal, absolute and relative, and between generations. Learning Objectives Describe several types of social mobility. Key Takeaways Key Points Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups in social position over time.

Social mobility may refer to classes, ethnic groups, or entire nations, and may measure health status, literacy, or education; however, more commonly it refers to individuals or families, and to their change in income.

Movement up or down the social hierarchy is called vertical social mobility. Movement between two equally ranked social positions is called horizontal mobility. Absolute mobility measures whether and by how much living standards in a society have increased; this is often measured by what percentage of people have higher incomes than their parents.

Key Terms meritocratic : Used to describe a type of society where wealth, income, and social status are assigned through competition. Social Mobility in the U.

Key Takeaways Key Points Socioeconomic mobility in the United States refers to the movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying. Prestige, Class and Mobility. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.

Reprints and Permissions. Measures of social mobility based on income inequality measures. Qual Quant 14, — Download citation. Issue Date : October Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. As an example, Tach contrasted the challenges of identifying step-children and halfsiblings. Step-children may be identified by asking about step-parents. Half-siblings, however, are far more difficult to identify in household surveys because they are living in the same household with both of their biological parents and therefore appear like children in stable intact two-parent families.

More nuanced questions are also necessary for gathering accurate data on gay and lesbian households. Questions about same-sex couples will yield data for families where both parents are living in the same household as the child, but miss gay and lesbian single parents. Questions will also need to identify bisexual and transgender parents. It is going to only grow in magnitude obviously given the social changes under way.

For the study of social mobility, new survey questions are also crucial for identifying the correct class positions of families of origin and destination and considering how families—in whatever form—transmit class-specific resources to the next generation.

As Tach traced new complex structures in families, she also considered some of the complex ways economic and cultural resources flow through or away from households. Tach shared findings from the few mobility studies that have differentiated between resident and non-resident parents. Can we get any more nuanced beyond that out of a new round of survey or data collection? If intergenerational transmission of resources is contingent on parentchild contact and interaction, then new family structures could have many.

Tach noted that the investments cohabiting parents make in their children and households may differ from those made by married parents in ways that matter for mobility. For example, cohabiting fathers may provide less instrumental and social support to mothers, exercise weaker parenting control, or engage less in income pooling. Data indicate that teens report less attachment to cohabiting biological parents than to married biological parents.

To explore these issues in a new study of social mobility, Tach suggested several kinds of information to gather. One is the length of time that children have been living apart from their non-resident parent, as well as the timing of the separation. Another relevant line of inquiry is the nature and extent of involvement between the child and non-resident parent. Direct studies of intergenerational correlations between children and step-parents are lacking, but as with cohabiting unmarried parents, it is possible that those correlations might be weaker or different in some way for step-parents compared to married biological parents in intact families.

Tach referred to data indicating that investments of resources, time, and money are very different for step-parents than they are for biological parents. For the study of social mobility, she explained, it would be imperative to have information on how long a child spent in a step-family and also on the level of investment or intensity of involvement of step-parents.

For blended families, Tach raised similar questions. Children in blended families may have access to different economic and cultural resources than their half- and step-siblings, despite living in the same household, because of their different biological, step-, and non-resident parents.

Resources may flow across households differently, as parents in blended families may be sending resources to ex-partners and children in other households. Tach provided a summary of what she termed as essential tasks for a new survey that could properly measure contemporary families and. In concluding, Tach drew attention to a valuable resource. The National Center for Family Marriage Research has created question crosswalks for all of the large national household surveys.

They have compiled information on how each survey measures cohabitation, marital status, household rosters, union instability, and other indicators, and generated crosswalks between them. Mare then directed attention to several aspects of multigenerational families and the role of grandparents in intergenerational transfers. With increased longevity, grandparents are living longer and may remain relevant actors in the intergenerational transmission of resources.

The overall picture of longevity, however, provides no information on the social stratification of grandparents. Some of us have a lot of grandparents, and well—they are nice, but they cannot really do much for us.

He considered the possibility of deep and enduring legacies that remote ancestors may impart. As examples, Mare speculated on the impact of having a remote ancestor who went to Yale, or won a lottery, or was sold into slavery, or made a decision to immigrate, or failed to make that decision.

Demography is a further concern of Mare. Although social mobility depends on the intergenerational transmission of advantages and disadvantages, it also depends on basic demographic reproduction.

Mare said he is curious about the connections between mobility and demographic effects. One is the importance of gathering information on grandparents, if only to enable better interpretation of data. Perhaps, Mare suggested, the combined associations across three generations will prove stronger than two-generation associations, helping to explain the persistence of social inequality. Education has also been changing in many ways over the past half century, including the types of institutions that provide it, the proliferating pathways that people follow to acquire it, and its value and impact on social mobility.

Overall, increasing heterogeneity in educational experiences requires nuanced measurement of education as both an outcome of and an ingredient to social mobility. Types of educational institutions are increasingly varied. They include a plethora of licensure and certification programs, adult educational programs in correctional facilities, online courses and degree-granting programs, as well as charter schools and home schooling. Conventional schools, still the most common setting for educational activities, are themselves vastly different in terms of quality, curricula, resources, cost, populations served, faculty and other professional staff, student achievement, and organization and policies.

In course sequences that unfold over time, students are set on a path toward college or toward less skilled occupations. Muller highlighted the increasing number of students enrolled in postsecondary education, yet the lack of a concomitant increase in the number actually completing degrees.

Enrollment patterns could be something that is quite telling about potential mechanisms and also will give you some information about parents supporting kids. Other characteristics of students who enroll in postsecondary institutions but do not complete a degree are that they are disproportionately non-white and from lower socioeconomic strata.

Conventional indicators of educational attainment, such as degree completion, will not satisfactorily convey their educational experiences in ways that are useful for the study of social mobility. Muller identified many possible sources of useful data on educational experiences over the life course. High school and postsecondary transcripts are valuable, often detailed sources of information about courses enrolled in, credits attempted, credits earned, courses completed or withdrawn from, and grades earned.

Among other data sources Muller discussed are the U. The American Council on Education keeps records on general educational development tests, although it is important to bear in mind that different states have different thresholds for a passing score. The National Student Clearinghouse tracks degrees earned at a large portion of colleges and universities.

Muller has not found a comparable central data source addressing the certificates and professional licenses that people obtain by passing professional tests or attending specialized school and training programs.

That is problematic if you are trying to be comprehensive. The U. All of these sources are complemented by selfreports and administrative data. Significant changes in labor markets are highly relevant to the study of social mobility and raise substantive issues about measurement including not only how but also when measurements are made across the life course.

Mazumder began by identifying some fundamental changes in the economy and labor markets that could affect measures of social mobility. These include technological change, globalization, and outsourcing. Trends of concern to those interested in studying social mobility include income mobility and occupational mobility. Advances have been made in measuring intergenerational income mobility.

For example, adult children who will eventually have higher permanent incomes may have steeper earnings profiles and systematically lower income when younger. These issues are not resolved by. Mazumder noted that consumption patterns might provide a better indicator of status than income; however, data on income are more readily available. Occupational status is another labor market outcome that may be an indicator of intergenerational mobility. As with measurements of income, the timing and frequency of measurements of occupational status is significant.

Some individuals will have many occupations across a career, and there may not be an optimal age for sampling, given the more volatile labor market. Mazumder noted evidence of the rise in occupation switching, as data show a substantial increase in the rate at which workers change occupations when they switch jobs. Mazumder also discussed the so-called polarization of jobs. In this pronounced labor market trend, occupations involving routinized skills that are relatively easy to replace through technology or outsourcing have declined substantially over time at an accelerating pace.

These jobs tend to be in the middle of the occupational income distribution. In addition to occupation switching and job polarization, Mazumder highlighted mass incarceration as a third significant trend affecting labor markets.

Incarceration rates, particularly of African American men, have reached such levels as to influence measures of mobility based solely on those who are active in the labor market. In , for example, more than a third of African American males lacking a high school diploma and between the ages of 20 and 34 were incarcerated, compared to just more than 10 percent in For this same group, their rates of incarceration were higher than their rate of employment.

This situation underscores possible pitfalls of focusing on occupation measures as indicators of mobility for subgroups of whom many individuals will not be employed. A fourth labor market trend that may have implications for measuring mobility is the declining labor force participation of younger workers as they delay labor market entry.

Employment for high school—age youth has fallen nearly 20 percentage points over the last 25 years. Some of this decline can be attributed to rising education. The polarization of the adult labor market is also a factor, causing more adults to take jobs previously held by younger workers.

This pattern may be particularly significant for research using first jobs as a measure. It underscores the importance of creating measures of intergenerational mobility with respect to joblessness. For meeting these various measurement challenges, Mazumder suggested several possible solutions, including administrative data, retro-. Administrative data are essential for measuring income mobility, particularly for measuring income over long enough time spans and over key portions of the life cycle.

Data from the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration SSA might suffice for income mobility measures, although statistical adjustments would be necessary for real-time analysis.

Administrative data might not suffice for studying occupational mobility, although records from unemployment insurance matched with data from firms could be helpful.