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

Betthäuser, Bastian Andreas

doi:10.1177/0001699319868524

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(78 reference statements)

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“…9 Put differently, more than 60% of the parental class effect does not go through individuals' education, even when contrasting attainment in the salariat with attainment in lower classes. These results are in line with those reported in past research (see, e.g., Betthäuser, 2019;Breen & Karlson, 2013).…”

Section: Me Thods and Re Sultssupporting

confidence: 94%

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working‐class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Betthäuser

Bourne

Bukodi

2020

British Journal of Sociology

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Research in social stratification has shown that children from working‐class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labor market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro‐level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual‐level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35% of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20% of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labor market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.

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Section: Me Thods and Re Sultssupporting

confidence: 94%

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working‐class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Betthäuser

Bourne

Bukodi

2020

British Journal of Sociology

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“…Net of educational attainment, occupational origins have little impact on occupational destinations […].” In contrast, we clearly state that educational attainment, as operationalized in our analysis, accounts for 30%–40% of the association between parents and their children's social class position and that this depends on the social class cut‐off we examine (p. 359). This is in line with past research on Britain (Breen & Karlson, 2014), and with evidence from other societies, such as Germany (Betthäuser, 2020). There is now a growing literature that seeks to examine the ‘direct’ effect of individuals’ social class background on their labor market position that is not mediated by their educational attainment (see e.g., Bernardi & Ballarino, 2016).…”

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confidence: 92%

The case for studying the intergenerational transmission of social (dis)advantage: A reply to Gary Marks

Betthäuser

Bukodi

Bourne

2021

British Journal of Sociology

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Our article "Understanding the mobility chances of children from working-class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?" examines the role of cognitive ability and peoples' sense of control over their lives in mediating the effects of individuals' social background on their educational attainment and on their labor market position (Betthäuser et al., 2020a). The article takes as its starting point the persistent view in both academic and policy circles that most of the differences in the educational attainment and labor market success between individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds are due to differences in cognitive ability between them (see e.g., Marks, 2014;Murray, 2012). Using data from the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study, 1 we find that cognitive ability mediates a non-negligible yet limited amount of the effect of individuals' social background on their educational attainment (about 35%) and their labor market position (about 20%). This means that about 65% of the effect of individuals' social background on their educational attainment, and about 80% of the effect on their labor market position, is channeled by factors other than cognitive ability. Contradicting the claims by Murray (2012), Marks (2014), and others, this finding highlights that the intergenerational reproduction of social (dis)advantage that prevails in even the most developed societies is deeply unmeritocratic and unfair.Consequently, we see an urgent need for researchers to identify and for policy makers to address the channels through which individuals' parental class background shapes their life chances, above and beyond its effects on individuals' cognitive ability.In his commentary on our article, Gary Marks (2020, p. 3) concludes that the findings of our article "are technically correct but unimportant." He argues that examining the role of cognitive ability in mediating the association between individuals' social background and their educational and labor market outcomes is not a relevant exercise, since there are "only moderate associations of class origins with educational and occupational outcomes" (p.2). Instead, he suggests that research should focus on the importance of individuals' genetic predisposition and cognitive ability in affecting individuals' educational attainment and labor market outcomes (p. 2). In short, MarksThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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“…there has been no decline in the proportion of respondents coming from such origins (e.g. for Germany, see Betthäuser, 2017). These two trends together, compensated for by a shrinkage of the intermediate classes, will then in themselves tend to increase the probability that more respondents experience upward mobility than downward, simply because more have the chance of so doing.…”

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confidence: 99%

Intergenerational Class Mobility in Europe: A New Account

2019

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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.

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

Cited by 6 publications

References 55 publications

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working‐class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working‐class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

The case for studying the intergenerational transmission of social (dis)advantage: A reply to Gary Marks

Intergenerational Class Mobility in Europe: A New Account

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