“Write short note: Inter-generational mobility.” (2000, 1991)
Inter-generational mobility is the difference between the social position of children as adults and that of their parents, as when a weaver’s daughter becomes an engineer. Intra-generational mobility, by contrast, is change within one person’s career. Because it shows how far birth decides destiny, inter-generational mobility is the standard sociological measure of equality of opportunity.
How it is measured
- Mobility tables: a cross-tabulation of fathers’ and children’s classes.
- Outflow rows show where children of a given origin end up.
- Inflow columns show where the members of a class came from.
- Absolute versus relative rates: John H. Goldthorpe‘s Oxford Mobility Study (1980) found a great deal of absolute upward mobility in Britain. The relative odds, however, barely changed. They were later summarised as the 1:2:4 rule of relative hope: whatever chance a working-class boy had of reaching the service class, an intermediate-class boy had roughly twice that chance and a service-class boy four times.
- Status attainment models: Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan (1967) traced a son’s occupational status through his father’s occupation, his father’s education and his own schooling.
- Economic measures: economists measure how closely a child’s income or education rank tracks the parent’s. The “Great Gatsby curve” (Alan Krueger, 2012) shows that more unequal countries tend to have less mobility between generations.
Theoretical significance
- Functionalists read high inter-generational mobility as a sign of meritocracy.
- Marxists point to the self-recruitment of elites.
- Anthony Giddens‘s idea of class structuration holds that low mobility between generations lets classes reproduce shared life experiences and become distinct social groups.
Indian evidence
- Low and stable overall mobility: Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkin (2024) measured the expected education rank of children born to parents in the bottom half. They found mobility in India “constant and low” since before 1991.
- Mobility rose for Scheduled Caste sons and fell for Muslims.
- Daughters were less mobile than sons.
- Cohort change: Mehtabul Azam‘s analysis of IHDS data showed higher occupational mobility for men born in 1975-84 than for those born in 1945-54. Among men born after 1965, SC/ST men were more mobile than upper-caste men, which suggests caste barriers to changing occupation are weakening.
- Comparison with other countries: the World Bank’s Fair Progress? (2018) found that India offered the least educational mobility among its developing-country comparators. The gender gap had not narrowed across cohorts.
Limitations of the concept
- Gender bias: classic studies compared fathers and sons, which feminist critics rejected. Women’s mobility through their own work, and through marriage, needs separate measurement.
- Occupation is not rank: in a caste society, a change of occupation may leave ritual status and marriage networks unchanged.
- Two generations are too few: advantages such as land, networks and caste capital can skip a generation and reappear.
Conclusion
Inter-generational mobility is the most direct measure of whether a society is keeping its promise of equal opportunity. India’s record is mixed: marginalised groups are catching up, but relative mobility in the country as a whole has stayed stubbornly low.