Over at The Global Sociology Blog, SocProf put up some interesting visuals about social mobility, the likelihood that you have a significantly different economic status than your father. Social mobility is important because it measures the degree to which a society has a caste system (in which you are restricted to the class you are born into, by whatever means) or one that gives people equal opportunities to ascend or descend the class hierarchy according to their hard work and talent.
Compared to similar countries, the U.S. has low social mobility (though most Americans think the opposite), along with Italy, the U.K., Chile, and Slovenia . Scandinavian countries, Canada, and Australia have the most (see SocProf’s data here).
SocProf, however, asked a question I’ve never seen asked before: does this mobility differ by gender? It does. She found that daughters are more upwardly mobile than sons.
This first graph shows the percent of sons, born to a low-earning father, who will end up the top 40% of earners (orange) or the bottom 40% (blue). Social mobility in the U.S. is lowest among the countries featured; almost 70% of American sons of low-earners stay in the bottom 40%.
The second graph is the same data for daughters. Mobility for daughters is higher in all countries, but it is especially so in the U.S. While 70% of sons stay in the bottom 40%, we can say the same for less than half of daughters.
Reflecting on the fact that the difference between daughters and sons was higher in the U.S. than in the comparison countries, SocProf suggests that “[g]reater mobility seems to go together with greater gender equality” in mobility.
See also this interactive graph mapping social mobility where you can see how you compare to the rest of the U.S.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 29
Alastair Roberts — December 12, 2012
Presumably significant change here must be driven in part by more rich women 'marrying down' on the socio-economic scale.
Kali — December 12, 2012
Is the class defined based on personal income or household income or household wealth?
IHaveTheNight — December 12, 2012
"Social mobility" makes me sick to my stomach. At least I don't live in Sweden.
myblackfriendsays — December 12, 2012
Interesting interpretation. I figured it was because it's probably easier for a non-rich woman to marry a rich man than it is for a non-rich man to marry a rich woman.
Meg — December 12, 2012
Do they compare to mothers, or just fathers? And how do boy's social mobility relate to their mothers? By comparing just to fathers and not investigating the underlying dynamics involved, this measure seems nearly meaningless; it may be that rich fathers support their sons directly in a way they do not support their daughters.
Leila — December 12, 2012
These 2 graphs only measure against low-earning fathers i.e. movement AWAY from the lower class. Seeing as that's usually associated with a strong sense of masculinity/toughness/solidarity etc., could there be an argument that there is more incentive for women to move into a higher class than men?
I think Peter Trudgill (1983) found that men tend to overestimate 'lowerclassness' (sorry :D) in their speech, whereas women tend to underestimate it.
It would be interesting to see how this theory holds up if you measured top earning parents (either, I guess) against THEIR sons and daughters to see if daughters still slide faster DOWN the scale than sons, even though you'd except there to be more social 'incentive' for sons to be downwardly mobile.
decius — December 12, 2012
Keep in mind that every movement upward in the quintile system is balanced by a movement downward—it is indeed a zero sum system, because 40% of people must be in the bottom two quintiles.
gasstationwithoutpumps — December 12, 2012
Stacking the orange bars on top of the blue bars makes no sense visually. There is no reason to add those two numbers. It would make much more sense to show the blue bars growing up from 0 and the orange bars dropping down from 100.
T — April 23, 2023
Why do you think Americans have the idea that upward mobility is common when the opposite is true statistically