Class Mobility

Class mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups between social classes, whether upward, downward, or sideways, within a lifetime or across generations. Sociologists distinguish intragenerational mobility, which occurs within a person’s career, from intergenerational mobility, which compares children’s positions with those of their parents, and they separate absolute mobility, produced by structural change in the occupational system, from relative mobility, which measures the chances of people from different origins. Pitirim Sorokin pioneered the systematic study of social mobility, while Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan’s status attainment model assessed the influence of parental background and education on occupational outcomes. David Glass’s research in Britain and John Goldthorpe’s Oxford Mobility Study found that relative mobility rates remained fairly stable despite expanding opportunities. Pierre Bourdieu showed how cultural capital advantages children from privileged families, and Raj Chetty has documented how neighborhood and family income affect mobility in the United States. Michael Young’s satire of meritocracy warned of new forms of hierarchy. Mobility can bring experiences of dislocation, as in Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb’s study of the hidden injuries of class. Class mobility remains central to research on inequality, education, work, and meritocracy.