SOC 302 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Social Mobility, Child Poverty, Thomas Piketty
Document Summary
Social mobility: moving up and down the ladder. Social mobility - refers to the upward or downward movement of individuals and groups among different class positions as a result of changes in occupation, wealth or income. Intergenerational mobility - refers to social movement across generations. We can analyze where children are on the scale compared with their parents or grandparents. Intragenerational mobility - refers to how far an individual moves up or down the socioeconomic scale during his or her working life. Most mobility is structural mobility - upward mobility made possible by expansion of better paid occupations at the expense of poorly paid ones. Most mobility in the us since wwii has depended on continually increasing prosperity. Exchange mobility - exchange of positions such that more talented people in each generation move up the economic hierarchy, while less talented people move down. Only in a hypothetical society with complete equality of opportunity - which no society ever approaches.
