Intergenerational Class Mobility in Europe: A New Account

Abstract

Comparative research into intergenerational social mobility has been typically restricted to a relatively small number of countries. The aim of this paper is to widen the perspective, and to provide an up-to-date account of rates of intergenerational class mobility for men across 30 European countries, using a newly-constructed comparative data-set based on the European Social Survey. Absolute mobility rates are found to vary quite widely with national differences in the extent and pattern of class structural change. As regards relative rates, countries are best seen as falling into groups within comparatively high and low fluidity sets, within which groups a high degree of cross-national commonality prevails. Further results indicate that country differences in relative rates play only a very limited part in accounting for country differences in absolute rates, confirming that the latter are primarily determined by class structural change. Based on our findings, we suggest a restatement of the FJHhypothesis to the effect that in societies with a capitalist market economy, a nuclear family system and a liberal-democratic polity, a limit exists to the extent to which relative rates of class mobility can be equalized, which countries may move closer to or, in the case of post-socialist societies, recede from.

Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in Post‐Soviet Russia

“…Both the Bukodi et al . () and Jerrim and Macmillan () findings are consistent with our more detailed findings, although we show that the picture is more complicated once a richer dataset is used to derive the correlations.…”

“…Bukodi et al . () report results on social mobility making use of the European Social Survey, a comparable dataset for 30 European countries, including Russia. Their definition of ‘social class’ is essentially an occupational one, and their data cover five waves between 2002 and 2010.…”

Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

“…However, while these trends may account for the observed increase in overall social fluidity during the 20 th century, it is not clear that they also led to an increase in the mobility chances of individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds. With the notable exception of an extension of compulsory schooling in all German states (Bundesländer) during the two decades following World War II (see Betthäuser, 2018;Müller and Haun, 1994), there have been few reforms of the German education system which can be expected to have substantially reduced the educational inequality between this group and people from more advantaged backgrounds (see, Bukodi et al, 2017, Neugebauer et al, 2013Schneider, 2006). Moreover, given the generally low level of educational attainment of people from disadvantaged backgrounds (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993), it is questionable whether the trend of educational expansion in Germany has increased the educational attainment of this group to an extent that would have given rise to a weakening of the effect of their parental class background on their labour market chances.…”

Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

“…It has been argued that the level of economic resources that parents can use to support their children's education and transition into the labour market is a key determinant of the latter's educational attainment and labour market position (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992). Consequently, a high level of inequality in economic resources in the parental generation is seen to lead to a high level of inequality in the educational and labour market chances of 4 children from different social backgrounds (Corak, 2013;Andrews and Leigh, 2009, but see Bukodi et al, 2017), and vice versa. Changes in the level of parental economic resources are likely to have a particularly strong effect at the bottom of the social class structure, where parents have to make hard choices about the amount of economic resources that they can devote to supporting their children's early development, education and labour market entry.…”