Absolute and Relative Mobility
Absolute mobility measures whether (and by how much) living standards in a society have increased—often measured by what percentage of people have higher incomes than their parents. Relative mobility refers to how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution.
The more absolute mobility there is, the better off the population is than their parents, and their children will consequently be better off than them. Relative mobility refers to the fluidity of a society. If your family is poor, you have a decent chance of moving up the relative income ladder. Because relative mobility depends on one’s place in the distribution, it is a zero-sum phenomenon. In other words, if one person moves up in relative terms, another by definition must have moved down. In contrast, absolute mobility is not zero-sum.
Social mobility can be classified as:
- Vertical mobility: The movement of individuals and groups up or down the socioeconomic scale. Those who gain in property, income, status, and position are said to be upwardly mobile, while those who move in the opposite direction are downwardly mobile.
- Horizontal mobility: The movement of individuals and groups in similar socio-economic positions, which may be in different work situations. This may involve change in occupation or remaining in the same occupation but in a different organization, or may be in the same organization but at a different location.
- Lateral mobility: It is a geographical movement between neighborhoods, towns or regions. In modern societies there is a great deal of geographical mobility. Lateral mobility is often combined with vertical as well as horizontal mobility.
Read more about this topic: Intergenerational Mobility
Famous quotes containing the words absolute and, absolute, relative and/or mobility:
“All beauties contain, like all possible phenomena, something eternal and something transitory,—something absolute and something particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction skimmed from the common surface of different sorts of beauty. The particular element of each beauty comes from the emotions, and as we each have our own particular emotions, so we have our beauty.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)
“The ungentlemanly expressions and gasconading conduct of yours relative to me yesterday was in true character of yourself and unmask you to the world and plainly show that they were ebullitions of a base mind ... and flow from a source devoid of every refined sentiment or delicate sensations.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)