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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
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.
0007-1315
154-182
Buscha, Franz
425351f5-9eb4-40fe-b60a-77546e228851
Sturgis, Patrick
b9f6b40c-50d2-4117-805a-577b501d0b3c
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), 154-182. (doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12275).

Record type: Article

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.

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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
ORCID for Patrick Sturgis: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1180-3493

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Date deposited: 12 Sep 2016 09:09
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:52

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Contributors

Author: Franz Buscha
Author: Patrick Sturgis ORCID iD

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