NEW RESEARCH DEBUNKS THE UPWARD MOBILITY MYTH

[cronus]

https://psmag.com/economics/new-researc ... ility-myth

NEW RESEARCH DEBUNKS THE UPWARD MOBILITY MYTH

In America, if you're ambitious and work hard, you can move up the socioeconomic ladder. At least, that's the truism we all grew up believing.

But new research suggests such social mobility is far from the norm. It finds you are significantly more likely to hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions.

"Your circumstances at birth—specifically, what your parents do for a living—are an even bigger factor in how far you get in life than we had previously realized," Michael Hout, the New York University sociologist who conducted the study, said in announcing the results. "Generations of Americans considered the United States to be a land of opportunity. This research raises some sobering questions about that image."

Hout utilized data on 20,856 Americans who participated in the General Social Survey between 1994 and 2016. The occupations of participants and their parents were ranked by "social standing" on a 100-point socioeconomic index, ranging from physician (93 points) to flight attendant (53) to shoe shiner (nine).

"American workers face dramatically different opportunities, depending on their parents' occupations," Hout reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Specifically, he found half of the Americans surveyed whose parents held top-tier occupations worked in jobs ranked at 76 or higher on that 100-point scale. Half of those whose parents' jobs were in the bottom tier were in jobs that scored 28 or under.

"Father's and mother's status were both significant factors in people's occupational success," Hout adds, "but father consistently had more influence."

The strong influence of one's parents' jobs on one's own occupation remained consistent for the entire period he examined (1994 to 2016). So why is the image of mom and dad being outdone by their offspring so pervasive?

Hout argues we have been misled by the fact that, for the Baby Boomer generation, pretty much everybody experienced upward mobility as part of the post-World War II economic boom. "Ninety percent of young adults earned more than their parents did, and 60 percent worked in higher-status occupations," he notes.

This was due to "broad economic growth and occupational transformation, not from equal chances to take advantage of opportunity," he writes. The waning of these trends in recent decades, he adds, has "unmasked" the reality that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have a tough time moving up.

The social stagnation this study suggests is even more problematic since blue-collar jobs are not providing the sort of robust paychecks they once did. Perhaps it's time to stop blindly believing that America makes it easy to move up in the world, and start implementing efforts to make that mirage a reality.

(continued)

[Svartalf]

wrong0, my granddads both started very wealthy, my dad was a highly trained city planner and my mum was a skilful artisan, but I never went beyond bottom of the barrel despite holding a MA. Similarly , my brother never went far in studies, or in jobs.

[Hermit]

https://psmag.com/economics/new-researc ... ility-myth

NEW RESEARCH DEBUNKS THE UPWARD MOBILITY MYTH

...new research suggests such social mobility is far from the norm...

Must have been a particularly slow day for the paper. Articles like this one seem to pop up with tedious regularity.

wrong0, my granddads both started very wealthy, my dad was a highly trained city planner and my mum was a skilful artisan, but I never went beyond bottom of the barrel despite holding a MA. Similarly , my brother never went far in studies, or in jobs.

You misread the article. It says "you are significantly more likely to hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions". It does not say you will hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions.

[cronus]

https://psmag.com/economics/new-researc ... ility-myth

NEW RESEARCH DEBUNKS THE UPWARD MOBILITY MYTH

...new research suggests such social mobility is far from the norm...

Must have been a particularly slow day for the paper. Articles like this one seem to pop up with tedious regularity.

wrong0, my granddads both started very wealthy, my dad was a highly trained city planner and my mum was a skilful artisan, but I never went beyond bottom of the barrel despite holding a MA. Similarly , my brother never went far in studies, or in jobs.

You misread the article. It says "you are significantly more likely to hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions". It does not say you will hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions.

Devil is in the details. Wealth doesn't buy happiness, although it can buy a more enjoyable form of misery.

[DRSB]

https://psmag.com/economics/new-researc ... ility-myth

NEW RESEARCH DEBUNKS THE UPWARD MOBILITY MYTH

...new research suggests such social mobility is far from the norm...

Must have been a particularly slow day for the paper. Articles like this one seem to pop up with tedious regularity.

wrong0, my granddads both started very wealthy, my dad was a highly trained city planner and my mum was a skilful artisan, but I never went beyond bottom of the barrel despite holding a MA. Similarly , my brother never went far in studies, or in jobs.

You misread the article. It says "you are significantly more likely to hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions". It does not say you will hold a high-status (which usually means higher-paying) job if your parents held similarly prestigious positions.

Seconding Hermit. Studies have good predictability rates as regards groups and none at tall as regards any one single individual. Nothing new that social rank and status is advantageous to any endeavour and that the rank and status of the parents grants a great deal of rank and status often even to the extent that nothing else es needed.

[Rum]

It is well recognised in the field of Education that kids from 'well off' backgrounds on average do much better. It is perfectly possible predict on the basis of social class and income how children will do with exams etc. and the average incomes they in turn will earn. 'Average' being the operative word. There are of course exceptions.

Education policy here has made numerous attempts to improve the outcomes for less well off kids. It is a tough one to crack and generally speaking it has not worked significantly.

[Hermit]

Wealth doesn't buy happiness, although it can buy a more enjoyable form of misery.

Neither the article nor anyone in this thread (apart from you) is talking about happiness. As for your platitudinous contribution, something very similar has been better put by someone else: "Money can't buy you friends, but you do get a better class of enemy." Spike Milligan (attrib.)

[laklak]

Bottom line is you're going to be a lot more like your parents then you probably want to be. Same holds true for political beliefs, religious affiliation, and a host of other things. My Dad was a Libertarian civil engineer who liked to drink. I'm a Libertarian programmer (ret.) who likes to drink. He was an anti-theist atheist. Same here. He liked to rebuild old cars and boats and engines, so do I. He had a bit of a temper, a propensity towards depression, had little time for social niceties, was a voracious reader, and thought the bulk of humanity were a waste of oxygen. Bingo. He stares back at me from the mirror every day.

Now, is it nature or nurture or both?

[Sean Hayden]

I'm a pure nature guy myself. I'd make rEv sick

--//--

To the OP --yep. But we don't talk about it. I even lie to avoid the harsh truth. People want to believe their hard work is the reason they are where they are. And in large part it can be. But everyone wants to believe that, and for everyone it can't be the reason. Still I'll go along with the lie most of the time and I think most of us do.

[laklak]

I'd have to go with both. By nature I lack a work ethic. Like, completely gone, I don't have one. Given my druthers I'd sit at the beach smoking dope and drinking cheladas all day, but both Mom and Dad had Depression Work Ethic in spades. Rubbed off on me, though I'm getting a lot better at not giving a fuck these days. The lack of a work ethic is nature, there's a strain of lazy redneck on Mom's side, particularly in the men. The women are all formidable, but the men are mostly shiftless gamblers. What work ethic I've got was definitely nurture.

[JimC]

Upward mobility has always been a carrot dangled in front of the working class by their corporate rulers. The few occasions where it actually happens are widely trumpeted, whereas the plain reality is that the economic inequality is built in, and will continually re-inforce the existing class structure.

This fantasy is becoming a more important opium of the people as the religious drug fades...

[Brian Peacock]

I have enough status for my needs. I hanker not to manage the family estate or oversee the administration of its assets, nor does it bother me that I was cut off by my father for expressing that very view. And while the years have softened his ire a little I have always refused his offers to reinstate my access even to a modest annuity nominated in my name. At some point one makes one's choice on which path to strike out on in life, and to rescind that decision for the promise of comfort and convenience has always seemed like a betrayal to me. However, I do draw a certain comfort from the knowledge that when the final visitor knocks upon my door there will exist in some form, in some place, a substantial financial interest that has, by my father's lights, been rendered redundant and useless by the dogged pridefullness of an ungrateful heir. That this would really piss him off cheers me up immensely.

[cronus]

Oil is still running out quicker than alternatives are coming to market. Gonna mess up the status thing all over the world one day.

[Rum]

I have enough status for my needs. I hanker not to manage the family estate or oversee the administration of its assets, nor does it bother me that I was cut off by my father for expressing that very view. And while the years have softened his ire a little I have always refused his offers to reinstate my access even to a modest annuity nominated in my name. At some point one makes one's choice on which path to strike out on in life, and to rescind that decision for the promise of comfort and convenience has always seemed like a betrayal to me. However, I do draw a certain comfort from the knowledge that when the final visitor knocks upon my door there will exist in some form, in some place, a substantial financial interest that has, by my father's lights, been rendered redundant and useless by the dogged pridefullness of an ungrateful heir. That this would really piss him off cheers me up immensely.

Tell us more Brian? What did you fall out over?

My dad was a police officer and I was a bit of a hippie and for a while he was a member of the 'pig' brigade in my eyes. We didn't speak for a good number of years, but gradually built bridges as I grew up a bit - and he retired. I'm so glad we were on good terms - very good in fact - when he died. Not for any pecuniary reason - just because it made us both feel better.

[laklak]

I'd take the money and become a dissolute international playboy, drag the family name through the gutter press.