Social mobility

Social status and social class

Social mobility is highly dependent on the overall structure of social statuses and occupations in a given society.^[6] The extent of differing social positions and the manner in which they fit together or overlap provides the overall social structure of such positions. Add to this the differing dimensions of status, such as Max Weber's delineation^[7] of economic stature, prestige, and power and we see the potential for complexity in a given social stratification system. Such dimensions within a given society can be seen as independent variables that explain differences in social mobility across times and places within different stratification systems. The same variables that serve as intervening variables in the valuation of income or wealth and also affect social status, social class, and social inequality do affect social mobility. These include sex or gender, race or ethnicity, and age.^[8]

Education offers an opportunity for upward social mobility and higher social status. However, the stratification of social classes and high wealth inequality directly affects the educational opportunities and outcomes. Social class and a family's socioeconomic status directly affect a child's chances for obtaining a quality education and succeeding in life. By age five, there are significant developmental differences between low, middle, and upper class children's cognitive and noncognitive skills.^[9] According to a 2013 Brookings Institution report on social mobility:

Among older children, evidence suggests that the gap between high- and low-income primary- and secondary-school students has increased by almost 40 percent over the past thirty years. These differences persist and widen into young adulthood and beyond. Just as the gap in K–12 test scores between high- and low-income students is growing, the difference in college graduation rates between the rich and the poor is also growing. Although the college graduation rate among the poorest households increased by about 4 percentage points between those born in the early 1960s and those born in the early 1980s, over this same period, the graduation rate increased by almost 20 percentage points for the wealthiest households.^[9]

Between 1975 and 2011, average family income and social status have both decreased for the bottom third of children. The 5th percentile of children and their families have seen up to a 60% decrease in average family income.^[9] The wealth gap between the rich and the poor, the upper and lower class, continues to increase as more middle-class people get poorer and the lower-class get even poorer. A child born to parents in the lowest income quintile is more than 10 times as likely to end up in the lowest quintile as the highest as an adult. A child born to parents in the highest quintile is five times more likely to end up in the highest quintile than the lowest.^[9]

This may be partly due to lower- and working-class parents, where neither is educated above high school diploma level, spending less time on average with their children in their earliest years of life and not being as involved in their children's education and time out of school. This parenting style, known as "accomplishment of natural growth" differs from the style of middle-class and upper-class parents, with at least one parent having higher education, known as "cultural cultivation".^[10]

At the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder, parents cannot provide their children with the necessary resources or opportunities to enhance their lives. As a result, they remain on the same ladder rung as their parents. On the opposite side of the ladder, the high socioeconomic status (SES) parents have the necessary resources and opportunities to ensure that their children also remain in same ladder rung as them.^[11]

More affluent social classes are able to spend more time with their children at early ages, and children receive more exposure to interactions and activities that lead to cognitive and non-cognitive development: things like verbal communication, parent-child engagement and being read to daily. These children's parents are much more involved in their academics and their free time, placing them in extracurricular activities that develop not only additional non-cognitive skills but also academic values, habits, and abilities to better communicate and interact with authority figures. Enrollment in so many activities can often lead to frenetic family lives organized around transporting children to their various activities. Lower class children often attend lower quality schools, receive less attention from teachers and ask for help much less than their higher class peers.^[12]

The chances for social mobility are primarily determined by the family a child is born into. Today, while college applicants from every socioeconomic class are equally qualified, 75% of all entering freshmen classes at top-tier American institutions belong to the uppermost socioeconomic quartile. A family's class determines the amount of investment and involvement parents have in their children's educational abilities and success from their earliest years of life,^[12] leaving low-income students with less chance for academic success and social mobility due to the effects that the common parenting style of the lower and working-class have on their outlook on and success in education.^[12]

Class cultures and social networks

These differing dimensions of social mobility can be classified in terms of differing types of capital that contribute to changes in mobility. Cultural capital, a term first coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu distinguishes between the economic and cultural aspects of class. Bourdieu described three types of capital that place a person in a certain social category: economic capital; social capital; and cultural capital. Economic capital includes economic resources such as cash, credit, and other material assets. Social capital includes resources one achieves based on group membership, networks of influence, relationships and support from other people.^[13]

Cultural capital is any advantage a person has that gives them a higher status in society, such as education, skills, or any other form of knowledge. Usually, people with all three types of capital have a high status in society. Bourdieu found that the culture of the upper social class is oriented more toward formal reasoning and abstract thought. The lower social class is geared more towards matters of facts and the necessities of life. He also found that the environment in which a person develops has a large effect on the cultural resources that a person will have.^[13]

The cultural resources a person has obtained can heavily influence a child's educational success. It has been shown that students raised under the concerted cultivation approach have "an emerging sense of entitlement" which leads to asking teachers more questions and being a more active student, causing teachers to favor students raised in this manner.^[14] This childrearing approach which creates positive interactions in the classroom environment is in contrast with the natural growth approach to childrearing. In this approach, which is more common amongst working-class families, parents do not focus on developing the special talents of their individual children, and they speak to their children in directives.^[14]

Due to this, it is rarer for a child raised in this manner to question or challenge adults and conflict arises between childrearing practices at home and school. Children raised in this manner are less inclined to participate in the classroom setting and are less likely to go out of their way to positively interact with teachers and form relationships. However, the greater freedom of working-class children gives them a broader range of local playmates, closer relationships with cousins and extended family, less sibling rivalry, fewer complaints to their parents of being bored, and fewer parent-child arguments.^[14]

In the United States, links between minority underperformance in schools have been made with a lacking in the cultural resources of cultural capital, social capital and economic capital, yet inconsistencies persist even when these variables are accounted for. "Once admitted to institutions of higher education," wrote William Bowen and Derek Bok in a 1998 book, The Shape of the River, "African Americans and Latinos continued to underperform relative to their white and Asian counterparts, earning lower grades, progressing at a slower rate and dropping out at higher rates. More disturbing was the fact that these differentials persisted even after controlling for obvious factors such as SAT scores and family socioeconomic status".^[15]

The theory of capital deficiency is among the most recognized explanations for minority underperformance academically—that for whatever reason they simply lack the resources to find academic success.^[16] One of the largest factors for this, aside from the social, economic, and cultural capital mentioned earlier, is human capital. This concerns the education and life preparation of children.^[17]

College-educated parents who have high levels of human capital invest in their children to maximize future success, from reading to them at night to developing a better understanding of the school system, which makes them less deferential to teachers and school authorities.^[16] Research also shows that well-educated black parents are less able to transmit human capital to their children when compared to their white counterparts, due to a legacy of racism and discrimination.^[16]

Education

The systems of stratification that govern societies hinder or allow social mobility. Education can be a tool used by individuals to move from one stratum to another in stratified societies. Higher education policies have worked to establish and reinforce stratification.^[18] Greater gaps in education quality and investment in students among elite and standard universities account for the lower upward social mobility of the middle class and/or low class. Conversely, the upper class is known to be self-reproducing since they have the necessary resources and money to afford, and get into, an elite university. This class is self-reproducing because these same students can then give the same opportunities to their children.^[19] Another example of this is high and middle socioeconomic status parents are able to send their children to an early education program, enhancing their chances at academic success in the later years.^[11]

Researchers have examined the role of education in the association between ability and social class attainment across three generations and found that social class of origin predicts educational attainment in both the participants' and offspring generations.^[20] Father's social class and participant's social class held the same importance in predicting offspring educational attainment—effect across two generations. There is no direct link between social classes across generations, but within each generation, educational attainment predicts social class.^[21][22]

Both social class attainment and social mobility are influenced by pre-existing levels of mental ability.^{[23][21][24][25][26]} So, the role of individual-level mental ability in pursuit of educational attainment, professional positions require specific educational credentials. Mental ability can contribute to social class attainment independent of actual educational attainment, as when the educational attainment is prevented, individuals with higher mental ability manage to make use of their mental ability to work their way up on the social ladder.^[26]

Education is very important in determining the outcome of one's future. It is almost impossible to achieve upward mobility without education. Education is frequently seen as a strong driver of social mobility.^[27] The quality of one's education varies depending on the social class that they are in. The higher the family income the better opportunities one is given to get a good education. The inequality in education makes it harder for low-income families to achieve social mobility. Research has indicated that inequality is linked to a lack of social mobility. In a period of growing inequality and low social mobility, fixing the quality of and access to education has the possibility to increase equality of opportunity for all Americans.^[28]

Research has shown that over the past few years, high-income families have increased their spending on their children's education. In 2013, high-income families paid seven times as much for education as low-income families.^[28] The increase in money spent on education may have caused an increase in college graduation rates for families with high incomes. Given the significance of a college degree in today's labor market, rising differences in college completion may result in increasing differences in outcomes in the future.^[28]

There is some debate regarding how important educational attainment is for social mobility. A substantial body of literature argues that social origins have a direct effect that cannot be explained by educational attainment.^[29] Other evidence suggests that, using a sufficiently fine-grained measure of educational attainment, including such factors as university status and field of study, education fully mediates the link between social origins and access to top class jobs.^[30][31]

Housing

Mixed housing is the idea that people of different socioeconomic statuses can live in one area. There is not a lot of research on the effects of mixed housing. A common assumption is that mixed housing will allow individuals of low socioeconomic status to acquire the necessary resources and social connections to move up the social ladder.^[32] Other possible effects mixed housing can bring are positive behavioral changes and improved sanitation and safer living conditions for the low socioeconomic status residents. This is because higher socioeconomic status individuals are more likely to demand higher quality residencies, schools, and infrastructure. This type of housing is funded by profit, nonprofit and public organizations.^[33]

The existing research on mixed housing, however, shows that mixed housing does not promote or facilitate upward social mobility.^[32] Instead of developing complex relationships among each other, mixed housing residents of different socioeconomic statuses tend to engage in casual conversations and keep to themselves. If noticed and unaddressed for a long period of time, this can lead to the gentrification of a community.^[32]

Outside of mixed housing, individuals with a low socioeconomic status consider relationships to be more salient than the type of neighborhood they live to their prospects of moving up the social ladder. This is because their income is often not enough to cover their monthly expenses including rent. The strong relationships they have with others offers the support system they need in order for them to meet their monthly expenses. At times, low income families might decide to double up in a single residency to lessen the financial burden on each family. However, this type of support system, that low socioeconomic status individuals have, is still not enough to promote upward relative mobility.^[34]

Income

Economic and social mobility are two separate entities. Economic mobility is used primarily by economists to evaluate income mobility. Conversely, social mobility is used by sociologists to evaluate primarily class mobility. How strongly economic and social mobility are related depends on the strength of the intergenerational relationship between class and income of parents and kids, and "the covariance between parents' and children's class position".^[36]

Race

Race as an influencer on social mobility stems from colonial times.^[37] There has been discussion as to whether race can still hinder an individual's chances at upward mobility or whether class has a greater influence. A study performed on the Brazilian population found that racial inequality was only present for those who did not belong to the high-class status. Meaning race affects an individual's chances at upward mobility if they do not begin at the upper-class population. Another theory concerning race and mobility is, as time progresses, racial inequality will be replaced by class inequality.^[37] However, other research has found that minorities, particularly African Americans, are still being policed and observed more at their jobs than their white counterparts. The constant policing has often led to the frequent firing of African Americans. In this case, African Americans experience racial inequality that stunts their upward social mobility.^[38]

Gender

A 2019 Indian study found that Indian women, in comparison to men, experience less social mobility. One possible reason for this is the poor quality or lack of education that females receive.^[39] In countries like India it is common for educated women not use their education to move up the social ladder due to cultural and traditional customs. They are expected to become homemakers and leave the bread winning to the men.^[40]

A 2017 study of Indian women found that women are denied an education, as their families may find it more economically beneficial to invest in the education and wellbeing of their males instead of their females. In the parent's eyes the son will be the one who provides for them in their old age while the daughter will move away with her husband. The son will bring an income while the daughter might require a dowry to get married.^[40]

When women enter the workforce, they are highly unlikely to earn the same pay as their male counterparts. Women can even differ in pay among each other due to race.^[41] To combat these gender disparities, the UN has made it one of their goals on the Millennium Development Goals reduce gender inequality.^[42]