Industrialization and Intergenerational Mobility in Sweden

The relationship between industrialization and intergenerational mobility has been a topic of discussion for over forty years. In this article both total mobility and relative mobility chances are studied in the decades preceding industrialization and the decades during industrialization. A high-quality data set is used covering the male population of a region in the north of Sweden during the 19th century. Total intergenerational mobility increased during industrialization until, at the end of the century, both industrialization and the growth of mobility stagnated. Sectorial barriers resulted in unequal relative mobility chances before and also during industrialization. However, sons from self-employed classes were less likely to inherit the class position of their father after the onset of industrialization. At the same time, mobility between classes differing in status became less frequent. These results show a decline in the importance of the direct transfer of resources between generations and may indicate the increasing importance of education

Social Mobility through Migration to the Colonies: The Case of Algeria

Most migrants move to further their economic and social position. How successful were they, and which migrants succeeded best? Would they have fared better if they had stayed at home? These questions are often raised regarding recent migrants to the United States and Europe, who often entered the labor market in relatively low positions. During their lifetime, many migrants improve their social position, as do subsequent generations. The migrants to Algeria during French colonial rule, however, entered the labor market at the higher echelons of society. Did they fare better than their parents? If so, did their descendants keep their relatively privileged colonial position? The effects of gaining or losing social, cultural, economic, and human capital appear to be different for various groups of migrants who moved to colonies, tweaking existing theories in economic history, settler history, and the sociology of migration

Intergenerational Transfer of Occupational Status in Portugal, 1850-1960: Unravelling Modernization Processes

This paper sets out to investigate the consequences of modernization processes as they took place in Portugal between 1850 and 1960 on the transfer of occupational status from father to son. Information from marriage registers in six municipalities in Portugal will be used

Partner choice in the Netherlands, 1813–1922 : The changing importance of ascribed and achieved status

Partners choose each other on the basis of many characteristics. Social status is one of them. A person’s social status can be ascribed, e.g. derived from the position of her or his parents, or achieved, e.g. derived from her or his own occupation. According to the status-attainment hypothesis, during the nineteenth century achieved status increased in importance and ascribed status decreased, especially in regions that experienced more modernization. In contrast, the romantic-love hypothesis predicts that modernization caused a decrease in the importance of both ascribed and achieved status. This paper tests these claims. We use data on all the marriages that took place in all the municipalities in six (of eleven) Dutch provinces between 1813 and 1922. These couple-level data are supplemented with municipal-level data on several dimensions of modernization. We find that men’s occupational status did indeed become more important and the occupational status of their fathers less important in the second half of the nineteenth century, when modernization accelerated. In general, modernization is positively related to partner selection based on achieved characteristics and negatively related to partner selection based on ascribed characteristics. However, especially in larger cities, some support is also found for the romantic-love hypothesis

Intergenerational mobility from a historical perspective

This chapter synthesises the international evidence on the impact of secondary and higher education expansion on intergenerational inequality in education. In high-income countries, the association between social origin (parental education, parental income, social class background) and educational outcomes (highest level of educational attainment, tertiary education) generally persisted then declined as national education systems expanded during the twentieth century, in line with the predictions of modernisation theorists. Nevertheless, levels of intergenerational inequality in education remained substantial into the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to parental education, suggesting the relatively greater importance of cultural over economic capital. Moreover, earlier trends towards equalisation appear to have ceased into the twenty-first century, with indications of a possible ‘U-turn’ ahead with respect to comparative rates of access to higher education. In lower-income countries, intergenerational inequalities in education are larger, have been slower to diminish, and are more strongly linked to economic inequality

A historical community approach to social homogamy in the past

This special issue is devoted to the theme of social homogamy, i.e. the likelihood of an individual marrying someone with the same social status, in past times. This introduction aims to situate each article within a broader framework of what unites this collection: a historical community approach to social homogamy in the past. This approach infuses sociological and historical theories in the historical debates on social homogamy. It does so using state-of-the-art research designs, with comparably coded large-scale datasets both on individuals and their families, as well as on the characteristics of the communities they lived in. Such a multi-level approach is deemed valuable as the communities considerably influenced marriage patterns