Social mobility
Occupation is another measure used in researching mobility which usually involves both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data, but other studies may concentrate on social class.
Absolute mobility looks at a person's progress in the areas of education, health, housing, income, job opportunities and other factors and compares it to some starting point, usually the previous generation.
Add to this the differing dimensions of status, such as Max Weber's delineation[8] of economic stature, prestige, and power and we see the potential for complexity in a given social stratification system.
In other words, social class and a family's socioeconomic status directly affect a child's chances for obtaining a quality education and succeeding in life.
[10] 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.
As the socioeconomic inequality continues to increase in the United States, being on either end of the spectrum makes a child more likely to remain there and never become socially mobile.
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.
[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.
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] 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.
While, the social causation hypothesis is supported when looking at health and socioeconomic status relationship through an education and income lenses.
[23] 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.
[24] Other possible effects mixed housing can bring are positive behavioral changes and improved sanitation and safer living conditions for the low socioeconomic status residents.
[24] 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.
[24] 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 curve demonstrates that high levels of economic inequality fosters low rates of relative social mobility.
In a 2009 study, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, Wilkinson and Pickett conducted an exhaustive analysis of social mobility in developed countries.
The evidence of increasing economic disparity and volatility of family incomes is clear, particularly in the United States, as shown by the work of Thomas Piketty and others.
At the macro level, political scientists report that xenophobia, anti-immigrant ideas, and resentment towards out-groups tend to be higher during difficult economic times.
After controlling the effect of independent variables, only IQ at age 11 was significantly inversely related to downward movement in social mobility.
Participant's educational attainment was strongly linked with the odds of moving downward or upward on the social class ladder.
Offspring's educational attainment was also strongly linked with the odds of moving upward or downward on the social class ladder.
Finally, the results suggest that social mobility (moving upward and downward) has increased in recent years in Britain.
[85] When private education supplements are introduced, it becomes clear that some elitist policies promote some social mobility and that an egalitarian system is the most successful at creating the maximum amount of welfare.
[85] The authors of the report showed that they can challenge conventional beliefs that elitist and regressive educational policy is the ideal system.
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.
With such bad education that urban schools are offering, parents of high income are moving out of these areas to give their children a better opportunity to succeed.
