By Slow Degrees: Two Centuries of Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain

This paper discusses long term trends in patterns of intergenerational socialmobility in Britain. We argue that there is convincing empirical evidence of asmall but steady linear trend towards increasing social mobility throughout theperiod 1800-2004. Our conclusions are based upon the construction and analysisof an extended micro-social dataset, which combines records from an historicalgenealogical study, with responses from 31 sample surveys conducted over theperiod 1963-2004. There has been much previous study of trends in socialmobility, and little consensus on their nature. We argue that this dissensionpartly results from the very slow pace of change in mobility rates, which makesthe time-frame of any comparison crucial, and raises important methodologicalquestions about how long-term change in mobility is best measured. We highlightthree methodological difficulties which arise when trying to draw conclusionsover mobility trends - concerning the extent of controls for life courseeffects; the quality of data resources; and the measurement of stratificationpositions. After constructing a longitudinal dataset which attempts to confrontthese difficulties, our analyses provide robust evidence which challengeshitherto more popular, politicised claims of declining or unchanging mobility.By contrast, our findings suggest that Britain has moved, and continues to move,steadily towards increasing equality in the relationship between occupationalattainment and parental background.