Social Mobility - Current Research

Current Research

In recent decades, new status hiearchies have emerged, leading to new opportunities for competition. India has seen a recent boom in employment, communication, distribution of goods, centralized administration, and urban living. This urbanization provides an escape from the ties of membership in rural based communities. Factors that would predetermine an individual's status are not as effective in urban areas. According to Harold Gould, the criteria for determining occupations in India are a person's skill and quality of performance rather than place of birth.

The status of any given role is based on its economic rewards and mobility. Studies have also shown that technological advances have both displaced certain groups as well as offered the chance for upward mobility. Some groups find themselves displaced by developing technology because their economic and social status have declined (ex. water carriers in parts of Northern India have been displaced by the introduction of handpumps). In other cases, individuals are finding new occupations with the opportunity for upward mobility. Most advances, however, appear to coincide with the opportunity for enhancement of social status.

In international comparisons, using the relationship between parents’ and children’s incomes as an indicator of relative mobility, data show that a number of countries including Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and France have more relative mobility than does the United States. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has famously said that trends in social mobility "are not as we would have liked".. The relation between social and economic mobility and equal opportunity and how they are related to income inequality and wealth inequality are the subject of much current research. .