Declining social mobility? Evidence from five linked censuses in England and Wales 1971-2011
Declining social mobility? Evidence from five linked censuses in England and Wales 1971-2011
In this paper we add to the existing evidence base on recent trends in inter-generational social mobility in England and Wales. We analyse data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS), which links individual records from the five decennial censuses between 1971 and 2011. The ONS-LS is an excellent data resource for the study of social mobility because it has a very large sample size, excellent population coverage and low rates of nonresponse and attrition across waves. Additionally, the structure of the study means that we can observe the occupations of LS-members' parents when they were children and follow their own progress in the labour market at regular intervals into middle age. Counter to widespread prevailing beliefs, our results show evidence of a small but significant increase in social fluidity between 1950s and the 1980s for both men and women.
154-182
Buscha, Franz
425351f5-9eb4-40fe-b60a-77546e228851
Sturgis, Patrick
b9f6b40c-50d2-4117-805a-577b501d0b3c
March 2018
Buscha, Franz
425351f5-9eb4-40fe-b60a-77546e228851
Sturgis, Patrick
b9f6b40c-50d2-4117-805a-577b501d0b3c
Buscha, Franz and Sturgis, Patrick
(2018)
Declining social mobility? Evidence from five linked censuses in England and Wales 1971-2011.
British Journal of Sociology, 69 (1), .
(doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12275).
Abstract
In this paper we add to the existing evidence base on recent trends in inter-generational social mobility in England and Wales. We analyse data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS), which links individual records from the five decennial censuses between 1971 and 2011. The ONS-LS is an excellent data resource for the study of social mobility because it has a very large sample size, excellent population coverage and low rates of nonresponse and attrition across waves. Additionally, the structure of the study means that we can observe the occupations of LS-members' parents when they were children and follow their own progress in the labour market at regular intervals into middle age. Counter to widespread prevailing beliefs, our results show evidence of a small but significant increase in social fluidity between 1950s and the 1980s for both men and women.
Text
revision_submitted.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 31 August 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 September 2017
Published date: March 2018
Organisations:
Social Statistics & Demography
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 400129
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/400129
ISSN: 0007-1315
PURE UUID: 6d5fe311-5cd2-4508-b339-e75375df7e90
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 12 Sep 2016 09:09
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:52
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Franz Buscha
Author:
Patrick Sturgis
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics