Difference between revisions of "Social mobility" - New World Encyclopedia

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Revision as of 22:38, 20 February 2006


Social mobility is the degree to which, in a given society, an individual's social status can change throughout the course of his or her life, or the degree to which that individual's offspring and subsequent generations move up and down the class system.

An example of a society with low social mobility was Hindu society under the caste system. Only with rare exceptions could individuals leave the caste into which they were born, regardless of wealth or merit. Societies which use slavery are an example of low social mobility because, for the enslaved individuals, mobility is nonexistent.

Modern western democracies have considerably more social mobility. Official or legally recognized class designations do not exist, and it is possible - though rare - for individuals to move from poverty to wealth or political prominence within one generation. Examples of this are John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, who were born into working-class families yet achieved political office in adult life, and Andrew Carnegie, who arrived in the U.S. as a poor immigrant and later became a steel tycoon. An example from another country is Pierre Bérégovoy who started working at the age of 16 as a metal worker and, in the end, became Prime Minister of France.

Nevertheless, such examples tend to be the exception rather than the rule. While a few individual members of the working class or even immigrants manage to achieve positions of wealth or power, the overwhelming majority do not. Indeed, it is physically impossible to have more bosses than workers, thus it is impossible for the majority of workers to rise out of their social class.

In market societies like the modern United States, class and economic wealth are strongly correlated and, therefore, often conflated. However, in some societies, they are different entities altogether. Usually, though, membership in a high social class provides more opportunities for wealth and political power, and therefore economic fortune is often a lagging indicator of social class. In newly-formed societies with little or no established tradition (such as the American West in the 19th century) the reverse is true: Made wealth precipitates the elite of future generations.

Social mobility is normally discussed in a positive light, but it is a two-sided phenomenon. Unlike absolute economic prosperity and individual standards of living, relative social class, strictly speaking, is a zero-sum game, and when there is upward mobility, there is also downward mobility. In the past 30 years, the United States has seen both directions of mobility. The 1990s tech boom allowed many bright entrepreneurs to enter the ranks of the wealthy, while downsizing in the manufacturing, and later, information technology sectors resulted in massive job-loss and dislocation throughout recent decades. Social mobility encourages entrepreneurism and, according to the mainstream liberal and conservative opinion, leads to a more fair society, but an excess thereof leads to widespread insecurity and anxiety.

A common error when discussing social mobility is to focus on a few exemplary cases while neglecting the average cases. The fact that a few people who were originally poor have become very rich does not prove that the society in general enjoys social mobility, indeed they are exceptions. However, more moderate degrees of social mobility occur regularly; for example, an unskilled laborer may eventually acquire the expertise necessary to move to a higher-paying job and become a part of the middle class.

Another common error when discussing social mobility is to disregard upward mobility's negative aspects, along with downward mobility. If people can manage an upward shift in their social status, they can just as easily (or more easily) slip downward. For example, if as man who has achieved upward mobility and has become wealthy, it may get to his head, in which case he would stop making any more money. He may even waste away all of the money he had previously worked so hard to earn in his life. Another example would be if a rich man had a child, and that child grew up with no hardships or problems in his life, he may grow up to have no drive for more upward mobiliy, and instead squander all his previous fortune.

The ability for an individual to become wealthy, out of poverty, does not necessarily indicate that there is social mobility in his or her society. Even societies with low or nonexistent social mobility afford free individuals opportunities to initiate enterprise and amass wealth, but wealth fails to "buy" entry into a higher social class. In feudal Japan and Confucianist China, wealthy merchants occupied the lowest ranks in society (at least in theory). In pre-revolutionary France, a nobleman, however poor, was from the "second estate" of society and thus superior, at least in theory, to a wealthy merchant (from the "third estate").

A (theoretical) society with perfect social mobility and ample opportunity is called a meritocracy, because, in such a society, individuals' responsibilities and compensation would be matched to their capabilities.

External links

The New York Times offers a graphic about social mobility, overall trends, income elasticity and country by country. European nations such as Denmark and France, are ahead of the US. [1]


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