Social Mobility
Social mobility is the set of movements or displacements made by individuals, families or social groups within a given socioeconomic system. Sociology studies this phenomenon within the framework of the theories of social classes, social stratification, meritocracy and social status. The etymological origin of the word mobility is Latin and comes from the word mobilitas (mobile) and the suffix -tad, the latter used to define an abstract quality. The word social comes from the Latin “social” and refers to belonging to a phenomenal community.
Types
There are forms of social mobility: horizontal and vertical. In its other meaning, it means to what extent socioeconomic achievement is inherited.
- La horizontal mobility is the passage of the individuals or groups of a professional agreement, from one industrial branch to another, from one ideological circle to another, without this implying the alteration of the social status (e.g., a construction worker who becomes an industrial worker, or an executive of a car company that moves to occupy an executive position in a bank)
- La intergenerational mobility. This mobility refers to the social mobility that occurs between one generation and the next. It is experienced when individuals belonging to a family change their profession regarding their ascendants (the son of a peasant who emigrates to the city to be a low-qualification worker), provided that this change does not involve a change in the socio-economic status of the family in general.
- La intragenerational mobility. Social mobility suffered by members of the same generation throughout their lives and affected them in their careers
- La vertical mobility It refers to the change from one class to another, and may be descending or ascending. A low qualification worker who promotes a superior position of skilled or foreman; or the son of a peasant who accesses university studies and becomes a doctor or lawyer, ascend (social strike), on the other hand, a shareholder affected by a stock market crash, a renter affected by inflation or a skilled worker who loses his job and is forced to a sub-employment, has a downward movement, descends from a class superior to a lower (social decline).
- La structural or forced mobility. It is defined by the amount of movements that is determined by the change of the occupational structure as a whole.
- La net or circulatory mobility. It indicates the number of movements motivated by the circulation of individuals between different positions in the same social structure.
- La absolute mobility. It defines the social mobility that is determined by the changes in the class structure. It is the total social mobility that describes a mobility table.
- La relative mobility. It determines the chances of being part of the different classes that individuals of different social origins have. This type of mobility is measured with the odds ratios and is a measure of social fluidity. If we apply the study of relative mobility over time in Spanish society, we find that such mobility can be broken down in four chronological periods: Estable1 (1907-31), Cambio1 (1932-46), Estable2 (1947-61), Cambio2 (1962-66). These periods would correspond to the stages experienced during pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial periods.
- La mobility of territorial occupation. Certain trades involve considerable distances, in order to be able to continue the work activity for companies that work at the national or international level, and therefore individuals are forced to carry out territorial mobility.
The level of education is an essential factor in achieving social mobility. When starting from an unfavorable position, education is generally the surest way to climb socially and financially. The groups that are in a favorable position and for which it is not convenient for them to move downwards, use education to perpetuate themselves, which is why it is very difficult for the less favored groups to be able to access this education and try to reach a higher level in the social scale.
According to other scholars, such as Roberto Gargarella, another essential tool for social mobility is the Law. This, through the formulation of legal norms that lead to the formulation of public policies, can be a tool that increases or decreases social mobility. By promoting institutional reforms that influence the development of historically relegated groups, it is possible to increase their social mobility and break the weight of the past on them. Examples of this are the inclusion of special seats in parliaments for representatives of disadvantaged groups, or affirmative action in places of work or study. Seeing it from a negative point of view, the Law can also do the opposite, which is to promote the maintenance of the socioeconomic status quo from the norms, or generate a social mobility that does not correspond to the merits, to the give preference to minority groups just for the fact that they are, regardless of their merits to be able to request it.
Causes that encourage mobility
The reasons why social mobility occurs can be several, the main ones are the following:
- Structural causes. Technological advance implies adaptation and occupational change.
- Meritocratic causes. The educational level is directly related to the individual's possibility of acquiring a high social status within the social scale.
- Family causes. In areas where there is a greater number of single parent families, the possibilities of social mobility are more complicated, in contrast to families with both parents, both occupational and territorial social mobility will be easier.
- Causes of incentive or motivation. Another concept to take into account would be that which relates proportionally to competition for mobility and the degree of social inequality, to more competition in inequality, but varies depending on whether mobility is motivated by obtaining resources or incentives: to more social inequality greater reward and proportionately greater motivation for mobility (social ascense); however if the resources are at stake, and these are in the hands of a few and inaccessible for the rest.
Studies on social mobility
In societies where industrial development has been more significant, social mobility has been facilitated, since opportunities for change have increased. In contrast, we find that the more inequality between groups of individuals (between social classes) at socioeconomic level within the same city or area, the possibilities of social mobility decrease. The degree of fluency is the concept used to measure the ease or not of people to move from one social class to another. An important indicator to know income inequalities between citizens of the same country is the so-called Gini Coefficient.
Social mobility implies a significant movement in the economic, social and political position of an individual or stratum. But generally what is studied is individual mobility, since the change in the position of the strata has more to do with evolution or social development, which should not be confused with social mobility. Studies on mobility are based on the fact that the stratification systems of the modern world are not rigid and allow the passage of an individual from one status or class to another. The basic instruments in the analysis of mobility are the «mobility matrices», where the matrix corresponds to a table made up of two variables: the source class (O) and the destination class (D).
Social mobility is a central element of the composition of capitalist societies and its main elements of analysis are structure and action. The crisis of the industrial paradigms brought together Weberian and Marxist sociological trends in cross-analyses on social mobility and stratification. As societies become more complex, the social division of labor increases, which favors the scenario for greater social inequality in a dysfunction between the discourse of possibilities and their effective realization (Goldthorpe/ Erikson). Empirical sociological analyzes on the matter also indicate that in the third world, or developing countries, there is an anti-capitalist principle in which the elites/upper classes are progressively closed, creating a theoretical conflict in which, at the level of study of stratification, it returns to a pre-modern social condition (privileged castes, status acquisition networks, etc). In these countries, the two central points of social mobility (education and work) are affected by a double process of privatization of the public sphere and dismantling of the structural capacity to generate employment.
In the United States and parts of Asia, patterns of intergenerational social mobility are shorter on average, yet more far-reaching in terms of upward mobility achievements. In Europe, due to the weight of the State, there is greater complexity in the analysis, but the trend of increasing the degree of competition between social classes continues, an issue related to social stratification.
Recently it has been shown that there is a clear negative correlation between social mobility and economic inequality. Much of these results have been compiled into meta-studies such as Wilkinson and Pickett's Inequality: An Analysis of Collective (Un)Happiness.
Mobility and social classes
Social mobility is an effect of the class structure and the production relations in which it originates. As Bertaux very well points out
the only fact of placing the study of the social structure under the perspectives of the notions of ‘straining’ and ‘mobility’, rather than approaching it from the concepts of ‘class relationship’ and its ‘reproduction’... is the sign of a general orientation that stands in appearances
That is why, if you want to understand social mobility, you have to relate it to social classes and their process of 'reproduction'. In this perspective, mobility appears for what it really is: the process of distributing the individuals of a society in the class structure of that society.
Mobility patterns.
While it is generally accepted that some level of mobility in society is desirable, there is no consensus agreement on "how much" social mobility is "good" or "bad" for a society. There is no international "benchmark" of social mobility, although degrees of mobility can be compared between regions or countries or within a given area over time. While cross-cultural studies comparing different types of economies are possible, the comparison of economies of similar type generally produces more comparable data. These comparisons typically look at intergenerational mobility and examine the extent to which children born into different families have different life chances and outcomes.
Studies from different countries
In a study whose results were first published in 2009, Wilkinson and Pickett conducted a comprehensive analysis of social mobility in developed countries. In addition to other correlations with negative social outcomes for societies with high inequality, they found a relationship between high social inequality and low social mobility. Of the eight countries studied: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the UK, and the US, the US had the highest economic inequality and the lowest economic mobility. In this and other studies, in fact, the US has very low mobility at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, with mobility increasing slightly as one moves up the ladder. At the top rung of the ladder, however, mobility declines again.
A study comparing social mobility between developed countries found that 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 the benefits of having a high-income parent are passed on to their children.
Studies have also found "a clear negative relationship" between income inequality and intergenerational mobility. Countries with low levels of inequality, such as Denmark, Norway and Finland had some of the highest mobilities, while the two Countries with a high level of inequality, Chile and Brazil, had one of the lowest.
In the case of Mexico, the Espinosa Rugarcía Foundation and the Espinosa Yglesias Study Center have measured social mobility in that country. Likewise, they have presented proposals to promote it, being pioneers in the matter. Social mobility in the country is still low for the poorest and richest segments, accentuating in the southern zone. However, in the north there is greater fluidity. A Mexican born into a poor household in the north of the country is around 3.5 times more likely to escape poverty than one born in the same situation in the south.
Negative trend
In Great Britain, much debate about social mobility was generated by comparisons of the 1958 National Study of Child Development (NCDS) and the 1970 Birth Cohort Study, BCS70, which compare intergenerational mobility in income between the UK cohorts of 1958 and 1970, and claims that intergenerational mobility declined substantially over this 12-year period. These findings have been controversial, partly due to conflicting findings on social class mobility using the same data sets, and partly due to questions about analytical sampling and treatment of missing data. The first UK Minister Gordon Brown has said that trends in social mobility are "not as we would have liked".
Along with the study "Do poor children become poor adults?", 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." A German study corroborates these results. Despite this low mobility, Americans have the highest belief in meritocracy among high- and middle-income countries. A study of social mobility among the French corporate classes found that class continues to influence who rises to the top in France, with members of the upper-middle classes tending to dominate, despite a longstanding emphasis on meritocracy.
Thomas Piketty (2014) finds that wealth-income ratios now appear to be returning to very high levels in countries with low economic growth, similar to what he calls "classical wealth" societies based on 19th century wealth in which a minority of their wealth lives, while the rest of the population works for subsistence.
Influence of educational attainment
Social mobility can also be influenced by differences in education. The contribution of education to social mobility is often neglected in research on social mobility, although it really has the potential to transform the relationship between origins and destinations. Recognizing the disparities between origin and their educational opportunities highlights how educational mobility patterns influence people's ability to experience social mobility. There is some debate about the importance of educational attainment for social mobility. A substantial literature argues that there is a direct effect of social origins (DESO) that cannot be explained by educational attainment. However, other evidence suggests that, using a sufficiently detailed measure of educational attainment, taking into account factors such as status university and field of study, education completes the link between social origins and access to first-class jobs.
The patterns of educational mobility that exist between inner-city schools and suburban schools are transparent. Graduation rates provide rich context for these patterns. In the 2013-2014 school year, Detroit Public Schools observed a 71% graduation rate, while Grosse Pointe High School (suburb Detroit) observed an average graduation rate of 94%. A similar phenomenon was observed in Los Angeles, California, as well as in New York. Los Angeles Senior High School (downtown) saw a 58% graduation rate and San Marino High School (suburb) saw a 96% graduation rate. Number two in the New York Geographic District (downtown) city) observed a 69% graduation rate and the Westchester School District (suburb) observed an 85% graduation rate. These patterns were observed across the country when evaluating differences between city graduation rates interior and suburban graduation rates.
Lack of education often leads to lack of future success for many people. They do not possess the required degrees to apply for even a large number of jobs. Therefore, these people can be trapped in communities that are in a state of rest. Ultimately, social classes remain stagnant because nothing is changing within each social construct and education is in the forefront in terms of its contribution to future problems.
Studies on the influence of intelligence and education
The achievement of social status and thus social mobility in adulthood are of interest to psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, epidemiologists, and many others. The reason behind the interest is because it indicates access to material goods, educational opportunities, healthy environments, and economic growth.
Researchers conducted a study that covered a wide range of data from individuals in their lifetime (infancy and through mid-adulthood). Most Scottish children born in 1921 participated in the Scottish Mental Survey 1932, which was carried out under the auspices of the Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE) and collected psychometric intelligence data from Scottish pupils. The number of children who passed the mental ability test (as per the Moray House tests) was 87,498. They were between 10 and 11 years old. The tests covered general, spatial, and numerical reasoning.
At mid-life, a subset of these subjects participated in one of the large adult health studies conducted in Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s. The particular study in which they participated was the collaborative study of 6,022 men and 1,006 women, conducted between 1970 and 1973 in Scotland. Participants completed a questionnaire (participant's address, father's occupation, participant's first regular occupation, age of completion of full-time education, number of siblings, and whether participant was a regular car driver) and attended a physical examination (height measurement). Social class was coded according to the Registrar General Classification for the participant's occupation at the time of selection, her first occupation, and her father's occupation. Investigators separated into six social classes were used.
A structural equation and correlation model analysis was performed. In the structural equation models, social status in the 1970s was the primary outcome variable. The main contributors to education (and first social class) were father's social class and IQ at age 11, which was also found in a Scandinavian study. This effect was direct and was also mediated through the education and first job of the participant.
Middle-aged participants did not necessarily end up in the same social class as their parents. There was social mobility in the sample: 45% of the men were upwardly mobile, 14% were downwardly mobile, and 41% were socially stable. IQ at age 11 had a gradual relationship with the participant's social class. The same effect was seen for the father's occupation. Men in middle age social class I and II (tallest, most professional) also had the highest IQs at age 11. Midlife height, years of education, and childhood IQ were significantly positively related to upward social mobility, while the number of siblings had no significant effect. For every standard deviation increase in IQ score at age 11, the chances of upward social mobility increase by 69% (with 95% confidence). After controlling for the effect of independent variables, only IQ at age 11 was significantly related to downward movement in social mobility. More years of education increase the chances that a father's child will rise above her social class, while a low IQ makes a father's child more likely to fall behind her father's social class.
Higher IQ at age 11 was also significantly related to higher midlife social class, higher likelihood of driving a car in midlife, higher first social class, higher father's social class, fewer siblings, higher age of education, being taller, and living in a less deprived neighborhood at midlife. IQ was significantly more related to social class at midlife than to social class at first job.
Finally, height, education, and IQ at age 11 were predictors of upward social mobility and only IQ at age 11 and height were significant predictors of downward social mobility. siblings was not significant in any of the models.
Other research examined the critical role of education in the association between ability and social class achievement across three generations (parents, participants, and offspring) using educational data from the SMS1932 (Lothian Birth Cohort 1921), the capacity of childhood and the end of life. It was proposed that social class of origin acts as a drag restricting otherwise meritocratic social class movement, and that education is the primary means through which social class movement is restricted and facilitated, thus Therefore, it plays a fundamental role.
The social class of origin was found to predict educational attainment in both the participants' and descendants' generations. Parent's social class and participant's social class were equally important in predicting achievement education of the offspring, with effect in two generations. Educational attainment measured the association of social class achievement across generations (social class of parent and participants, social class of participant and offspring). There was no direct link between social class across generations, but within each generation educational attainment was a predictor of social class, which is consistent with other studies.
In addition, participants' childhood ability moderately predicted educational and social class achievement. A participant's educational attainment was strongly linked to the odds of moving up or down the social class ladder. For each increase in higher education, the odds of moving up the spectrum of social classes were 2.58 times greater. Offspring's educational attainment was also strongly related to the odds of moving up or down the social class scale. For each increase in education, the odds of being promoted were 3.54 times greater. In conclusion, education is very important, because it is the fundamental mechanism that works both to keep individuals in their social class of origin and to make it possible for them to move up or down the social class ladder.
In the 1936 cohort it was found that with respect to entire generations (not individuals) the social mobility between the parent and participant generation was: 50.7% of the participating generation had moved up in relationship with their parents, 22.1% had moved down, and 27.2% had remained stable in their social class. There was a lack of social mobility in the generation of offspring as a whole. However, there was definitely an individual movement of offspring up the social class ladder: 31.4% had a higher level of social class than their participating parents (grandparents), 33.7% moved down, and 33.9% remained stable.. The participant's childhood mental ability was linked to social class in all three generations. A very important pattern has also been confirmed: the average years of education increased with social class and IQ.
There were some big contributors to the achievement of social class and social class mobility in the 20th century: both social class attainment as well as social mobility are influenced by pre-existing levels of mental ability, which was consistent with other studies. Therefore, the role of mental ability at the individual level in the pursuit of educational achievement: the Professional positions require specific educational credentials. Furthermore, educational attainment contributes to social class attainment through the contribution of mental ability to educational attainment. Furthermore, mental ability may contribute to the achievement of social class independently of actual educational attainment, since when educational attainment is prevented, individuals with higher mental ability are able to make use of mental ability to work up the social ladder. This study made it clear that the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is one of the key ways in which social class was maintained within the family, and there was also evidence that educational attainment was increasing over time. Finally, the results suggest that social mobility (moving up and down) has increased in recent years in Britain. According to one researcher, it is important because an overall mobility of about 22% is needed to keep the distribution of intelligence relatively constant from generation to generation within each occupational category.
Education is very important in determining the outcome of our future. It is almost impossible to achieve upward mobility without education. Education is frequently seen as a strong engine of social mobility. The quality of each person's education varies according to the social class in which they find themselves. The higher the family income, the better opportunities are offered to obtain a good education. Inequality in education makes it difficult for low-income families to achieve social mobility. Research has indicated that inequality is related to poor social mobility. In a period of growing inequality and low social mobility, fixing the quality and access to education has the possibility of increasing equal opportunities for all.
"A significant consequence of growing income inequality is that, by historical standards, high-income households spend much more on their children's education than low-income households." With no total income, low-income families cannot spend money on their children's education. Research has shown that in recent years, high-income families have increased their spending on their children's education. High-income families used to pay $3,500 per year and now it has risen to almost $9,000, which is seven times what low-income families pay for their children's education. The increase in money spent on education has caused higher college graduation rates for high-income families. The increase in graduation rates is causing an even greater gap between high-income children and low-income children. Given the importance of a college degree in today's job market, growing differences in college completion mean greater differences in outcomes in the future.
Family income is one of the most important factors in determining the mental ability (intelligence) of children. As urban school systems worsen, high-income families are moving to the wealthy suburbs because that's where they feel the education is best. If they stay in the city, they take their children to private schools. Low-income families have no choice but to settle for local public education, because they can't afford to move to the wealthy suburbs. The more money and time parents invest in their children, the more likely they are to succeed in school. Research has shown that higher levels of mobility are perceived in places where there are better schools.
Poverty and structural factors that perpetuate social marginalization make women doubly disadvantaged. Economic self-help groups (SAGs) are one of the development interventions used to address this problem. GDAs are groups of related people who support each other by saving and investing together. These groups are used to achieve social change and bring about the individual or collective empowerment of women. However, it is not clear if they do achieve such empowerment, to what extent they achieve it and if there are adverse consequences due to such participation. A systematic review of 34 studies, carried out in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrates the positive impact generated by GDAs on the economic and social empowerment of women. However, while GDAs can stimulate political empowerment, evidence suggests that changing the status of women in society is not the primary goal of their members. Likewise, there is no conclusive evidence that these groups promote psychological empowerment. It is important that policy makers facilitate the participation in GDAs of women who want to join, but lack the means to do so.