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Illustration from a 1916 advertisement for a vocational school in the back of a US magazine. Education has been seen as a key to social mobility and the advertisement appealed to Americans' belief in the possibility of self-betterment as well as threatening the consequences of downward mobility in the great income inequality existing during the Industrial Revolution.
Socioeconomic mobility in the United States refers to the upward or downward movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, [2] through job changes, inheritance, marriage, connections, tax changes, innovation, illegal activities, hard work, lobbying, luck, health changes or other factors.
Research has suggested that social comparisons with others who are better off or superior, or upward comparisons, can lower self-regard, [21] whereas downward comparisons can elevate self-regard. [22] Downward comparison theory emphasizes the positive effects of comparisons in increasing one's subjective well-being. [4]
Economic mobility is the ability of an individual, family or some other group to improve (or lower) their economic status—usually measured in income. Economic mobility is often measured by movement between income quintiles. Economic mobility may be considered a type of social mobility, which is often measured in change in income.
The extent to which downward mobility is occurring remains contested and has inspired many studies. Because educational attainment is a primary marker of immigrant mobility, much of this research focuses on the education of immigrants' children.
Peter M. Blau (1918–2002) and Otis Duncan (1921–2004) were the first sociologists to isolate the concept of status attainment. Their initial thesis stated that the lower the level from which a person starts, the greater is the probability that he will be upwardly mobile, simply because many more occupational destinations entail upward mobility for men with low origins than for those with ...
The American Occupational Structure (1967) classic study of structure and mobility; Curwood, Anastasia C. ed. Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars (University of North Carolina Press; 2011) 240 pages; explores the public and private views of upwardly mobile African-Americans between 1918 and 1942.
In 1960, for Current Sociology (Vol. IX, No. 1; entire issue), Miller wrote the first comparative study of social mobility, "Comparative Social Mobility: A Trend Report,” pointing out that, contrary to the myth, the rate of downward mobility frequently exceeds the level of upward mobility. His books include: