Social mobility - measurement
-Social mobility indicates „societal openness“
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-Aggregated data and mobility tables
-Social classes
-Resources, barriers, desirability
-Mobility paths
-Macro-level of social analysis
-The first and third generation of SSR
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-Individual data and path analysis
-Social statuses, employment, socioeconomic indexes
-Aspirations, motivations
-Social variables influence labor market positions
-Micro-level of social analysis
-Second generation of SSR

2
Blau and Duncan’s basic social stratification model
- Regression analysis
- Path analysis
- Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

Mobility table
-Intergeneration and intragenerational mobility
-Social reproduction
-Upward and downward social mobility
-long distance, short distance

Outflow mobility
-calculation of percentages in rows
-interpretation I: of all men originating in class Y, X% moved into class Z
-interpretation II: the probability of a man born into class Y, moving into class Z, was X%
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Inflow mobility
-calculation of percentages in columns
-interpretation: X% of all men in class Y came from class Z
-social composition of classes, „social heterogeneity“

Structural and net mobility I
-Social Mobility = structural mobility + net mobility
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-Structural (forced) mobility is given by
-economic and technological changes
-demographic changes (class difference in fertility, mortality, migration…)
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-Net mobility is real mobility
-how different class origins influenced destinations
-inequality in mobility chances stems from differences in:
-class resources
-class bariers
-class desirabilities
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-Identification structural mobility by Dissimilarity index

Dissimilarity index - DI, D, or Δ
-DI is computed as sum of positive differences between two percent distributions divided by number
2:
-Values <0;1>
-Interpretation: what proportion is needed for the situation in which two distributions are
identical?
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Structural and net mobility II
-Problems in identification structural mobility by DI
-two class structures are incomparable because of „career mobility“
-„age problem“ in SM research
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-Many efforts to empirically identify net mobility with the help of „mobility indexes“
-no proper way
-Solution: change in conceptualization of intergenerational mobility
-Social origin vs. social destination (SO - SD) (no intergenerational mobility)
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-Structural and Exchange mobility are replaced by concepts absolute and relative mobility
-It is not possible to measure structural and exchange mobility in data ex post
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-Contingency table: Father, Son and The Holy Ghost (the core of mobility table) (R. Erikson, J.
Golthorpe: Constant Flux, 1992)

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Absolute and relative social mobility I
•Absolute mobility is probability of ending up in a different social class from the one a person
was born into.
• Usually the movements are often small: from class 2 to 1, say, or from class 5 to 6.
•Measured in percent (%)
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•Relative mobility is chance, if a person started in, say, class 6 or 7, of making it to, say,
class 1 or 2 compared with those who started at the top.
•It is an answer to the question: if a person starts at the bottom, how many times less likely to
make it to the top than somebody born there
•Measured in odds ratios (OR)
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Key questions:
1.How strong is the relationship between where you start out (origin) and where you go to
(destination)?
2.What is the chance of a man from class Y to end up in class Z rather than in another class?
OR (odds ratio) is the convential meassure of inequality in access to particular class destinations
from different class origins.
1.
Absolute and relative social mobility II