Social mobility across three generations

This article examines differences in patterns of social mobility experienced by three generations (grandparents, parents, and children) within the same family lineages. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations, we found that each successive generation of offspring has had higher occupational attainment than the one before. However, the rate of upward mobility has slowed across generations. Moreover, the association between parents' socioeconomic stratum and children's socioeconomic stratum has weakened across the generations in our sample (independent of structural shifts in the distributions of occupations), suggesting a decline in the family transmission of social position to offspring. Finally, in terms of female social mobility, the level of broad occupational segregation faced by every successive generation of women remained constant.