Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, University of London
Abstract
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
