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The pattern of social fluidity within the British class structure: a topological model
Author(s) -
Bukodi Erzsébet,
Goldthorpe John H.,
Kuha Jouni
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/rssa.12234
Subject(s) - class hierarchy , social class , social mobility , inheritance (genetic algorithm) , hierarchy , inequality , class (philosophy) , odds , social status , demography , life chances , offset (computer science) , destinations , mathematics , demographic economics , sociology , geography , statistics , computer science , biology , artificial intelligence , economics , genetics , social science , logistic regression , mathematical analysis , tourism , archaeology , market economy , programming language , object oriented programming , gene
Summary It has previously been shown that, across three British birth cohorts, relative rates of intergenerational social class mobility have remained at an essentially constant level among men and also among women who have worked only full time. We establish the pattern of this prevailing level of social fluidity and its sources and determine whether it also persists over time, and we bring out its implications for inequalities in relative mobility chances. We develop a parsimonious model for the log‐odds‐ratios which express the associations between individuals’ class origins and destinations. This model is derived from a topological model that comprises three kinds of readily interpretable binary characteristics and eight effects in all, each of which does, or does not, apply to particular cells of the mobility table, i.e. effects of class hierarchy, class inheritance and status affinity. Results show that the pattern as well as the level of social fluidity are essentially unchanged across the cohorts, that gender differences in this prevailing pattern are limited and that marked differences in the degree of inequality in relative mobility chances arise with long‐range transitions where inheritance effects are reinforced by hierarchy effects that are not offset by status affinity effects.