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Industrialization and the Regime of Social Mobility in Postwar Japan
Author(s) -
Imada Takatoshi
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
international journal of japanese sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.133
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1475-6781
pISSN - 0918-7545
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6781.2000.tb00075.x
Subject(s) - openness to experience , social mobility , social stratification , industrialisation , stratification (seeds) , conservatism , social change , demographic economics , survey data collection , economics , economic geography , development economics , sociology , political science , economic growth , psychology , social science , social psychology , market economy , statistics , politics , seed dormancy , botany , germination , mathematics , dormancy , law , biology
This paper examines the hypothesis that the fluidity and openness of social stratification increase with industrialization, by applying a path analysis of status attainment and a log‐linear analysis of social mobility to data from National Survey on Social Stratification and Mobility carried out five times at ten‐year intervals since 1955 in Japan. The following two points are clarified through this analysis. First, the status attainment regime was constant from 1955 to 1995; when the effects of opportunity expansion due to economic growth are controlled, the data do not provide evidence that the openness of social stratification improved; and the industrialism thesis on openness is actually an illusion caused by the effects of economic growth. Second, the mobility regime was constant from 1955 to 1985, but the data from the 1995 survey do not fit the previous pattern and suggest a transformation may be under way. Based on the above findings, I will note that dissolution of the mobility regime must be considered when discussing the reality of future social stratification.