Social Mobility in Europe is the most comprehensive study to date of trends in intergenerational social mobility. It uses data from 11 European countries covering the last 30 years of the twentieth century to analyze differences between countries and changes through time. The findings call into question several long-standing views about social mobility. We find a growing similarity between countries in their class structures and rates of absolute mobility: in other words, the countries of Europe are now more alike in their flows between class origins and destinations than they were thirty years ago. However, differences between countries in social fluidity (that is, the relative chances, between people of different class origins, of being found in given class destinations) show no reduction and so there is no evidence supporting theories of modernization which predict such convergence. Our results also contradict the long-standing Featherman Jones Hauser hypothesis of a basic similarity in social fluidity in all industrial societies 'with a market economy and a nuclear family system'. There are considerable differences between countries like Israel and Sweden, where societal openness is very marked, and Italy, France, and Germany, where social fluidity rates are low. Similarly, there is a substantial difference between, for example, the Netherlands in the 1970s (which was quite closed) and in the 1990s, when it ranks among the most open societies. Mobility tables reflect many underlying processes and this makes it difficult to explain mobility and fluidity or to provide policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, those countries in which fluidity increased over the last decades of the twentieth century had not only succeeded in reducing class inequalities in educational attainment but had also restricted the degree to which, among people with the same level of education, class background affected their chances of gaining access to better class destinations.
Social Mobility in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Europe and America in Comparative Perspective
Building European Society: Occupational Change and Social Mobility in Europe 1840-1940
A comprehensive study of trends in intergenerational social mobility during the 20th century, this book examines the role of educational expansion and equalization in shaping these developments in both Europe and the United States.
"The European Committee for Social Cohesion (CDCS) is the intergovernmental body of the Council of Europe addressing social issues at the level of its 47 member states.
This report provides new evidence on social mobility in the context of increased inequalities of income and opportunities in OECD and selected emerging economies.
This open access book comparatively analyses intergenerational social mobility in immigrant families in Europe.
Liberal Reflections on Life Chances and Social Mobility in Europe
Historical Research on Social Mobility: Western Europe and the USA in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Across the EU, citizens and governments of Member States are becoming increasingly concerned that - for the first time in decades - younger generations will have fewer opportunities for upward social mobility than preceding generations.
14See Clyde V. Kiser, “Fertility Trends and Differentials,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, ... “It may ... come as a surprise to learn that schooling is one of the most equally distributed 'goods' in American society.