Class Origins, Education and Occupational Attainment: Cross-cohort Changes among Men in Britain

Studies of intergenerational class mobility and of intragenerational occupational mobility have of late tended to diverge in their concerns and methodology. This reflects assumptions regarding the increasing part played by education in intergenerational mobility and the decreasing part played by class origins in intragenerational mobility, once educational attainment is controlled. The paper contributes to the questioning of these assumptions on empirical grounds. Analyses are made of the occupational mobility of men in three British birth cohorts over the course of their earlier working lives :i.e. men born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. It is found that while the most important effect on mobility chances is that of educational qualifications, the importance of education does not increase across the three cohorts; that class origins also have a significant effect on mobility chances, and one that does not decrease across the cohorts; and that features of worklife experience, in particular the frequency of occupational changes, likewise have a persisting effect on mobility chances, independently of both education and class origins. However, while secular changes in mobility processes are scarcely in evidence, the analyses do provide strong indications of a cohort effect. Men in the 1958 birth cohort, whose first years in the labour market coincided with a period of severe recession, de-industrialisation and high unemployment, would appear to have experienced various lasting disadvantages in their subsequent occupational histories

The pattern of social fluidity within the British class structure: a topological model

It has previously been shown that across three British birth cohorts, relative rates of intergenerational social class mobility have remained at an essentially constant level among men and also among women who have worked only full-time. We aim now to establish the pattern of this prevailing level of social fluidity and its sources and to determine whether it too persists over time, and to bring out its implications for inequalities in relative mobility chances. We develop a parsimonious model for the log odds ratios which express the associations between individuals’ class origins and destinations. This model is derived from a topological model that comprises three kinds of readily interpretable binary characteristics and eight effects in all, each of which does, or does not, apply to particular cells of the mobility table: i.e. effects of class hierarchy, class inheritance and status affinity. Results show that the pattern as well as the level of social fluidity is essentially unchanged across the cohorts; that gender differences in this prevailing pattern are limited; and that marked differences in the degree of inequality in relative mobility chances arise with long-range transitions where inheritance effects are reinforced by hierarchy effects that are not offset by status affinity effects