Social Mobility and Demographic Behaviour: Long Term Perspectives

Abstract

We introduce a collection of papers that examine interactions between demographic behavior and social mobility via analysis of historical and contemporary longitudinal, individual-and household-level socioeconomic and demographic data. The authors originally presented these papers at "The International Seminar on Social Mobility and Demographic Behavior: A Long Term Perspective" held at the California Center for Population Research at UCLA in December 2009, and organized on behalf of the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Historical Demography. We convened the meeting as a means of promoting the use of historical demographic data to address a topic of contemporary relevance that has been the subject of much attention lately: how the inter-generational transmission of socioeconomic status and socioeconomic differentials in demographic behavior interact to shape patterns of inequality over the long term. The papers here focus specifically on relationships among fertility, marriage, migration, and social mobility.

Multigenerational approaches to social mobility. A multifaceted research agenda

“…This is a very different approach from the one described above, in which the researcher defines a sample of children who are then connected to information on parents and grandchildren. The reason why this conceptual approach may lead to very different findings is that it requires the consideration of demographic processes that may be just as consequential for the distribution of opportunities as the mobility processes described so far (Duncan 1966; Mare and Maralani 2006; Mare 2011; Dribe et al 2012; Hillmert 2013). Most importantly, fertility and marital patterns determine whether the advantage held in one generation is still observed in following generations.…”

Testing the conditional resource-dilution hypothesis: the impact of sibship size and composition on infant and child mortality in the Netherlands, 1863–1910

“…The resources that can be assigned to each child in the household is, therefore, seen as dependent on the total amount of resources and the number of children (Downey, 2001). Although several scholars have uncovered extensive empirical evidence which is consistent with the resource-dilution model (Black, Devereux, & Salvanes, 2005;Booth & Kee, 2008;Downey, 1995;Dribe, Campbell, & Van Bavel, 2012;Steelman, Powell, Werum, & Carter, 2002), the number of empirical studies that challenge it is growing (Bras, Kok, & Mandemakers, 2010;Chu, Xie, & Yu, 2007;Li, Zhang, & Zhu, 2008;Lu & Treiman, 2008;Marteleto & de Souza, 2012;Shavit, Pierce, & Pierce, 1991;Yu, Su, & Chiu, 2012). These studies demonstrate that it is too simplistic to assume that the parental couple is the unit that decides on the distribution of resources.…”

Stature and sibship: historical evidence

“…It is often suggested by historians that large families such as those observed in nineteenth century Europe, or more recently in developing countries, produce negative outcomes for children (Dribe et al, 2012). If so, then long run declines in fertility may be one reason among many for improved outcomes.…”