Economic, Political and Social Determinants of Mobility

Recent national comparative studies of intergenerational occupational (social) mobility have shown considerable variations in the rates of outflow from manual to nonmanual strata (upward mobility) and from nonmanual to manual strata (downward mobility).1) One of the authors was associated with an unsuccessful attempt to find simple dominating relationships between patterns of social mobility and various economic indicators.2) The results suggested that although economic factors may be important, they are not uniquely significant in influencing mobility patterns. Therefore, it would be well to expand the analysis of mobility determinants by exploring an intricate complex of social and economic forces that might influence mobility. The present paper extends the analysis in two ways: (1) it investigates a complex of possible economic, social and political determinants of social mobility; (2) it employs the techniques of multiple regression and partial correlation analysis. Unfortunately, the analytical study of comparative social mobility is still in the infant stages of development and no reasonably well-developed hypotheses exist which specify the crucial intersocietal determinants of mobility. Consequently, several economic, political and social variables have been selected from the ponderous mobility literature for the statistical analysis. The inadequacies of much basic data, the tortuous realigning of occupational categories to achieve some semblance of comparability, and the distortions of the statistical techniques require the recognition that the analysis can only be regarded at best as suggestive. With these limitations in mind, it will be seen that five mobility determinants gross national product (GNP) per capita, education, political stability, urbanization, achievement motivation in concert account for more than 80 percent of the manual and nonmanual outflow mobility variance among twelve nations. We deal with only one form of social mobility intergenerational occupational change and only one gross type of movement manual and nonmanual outflow.