Does it matter where you’re from? Geographical variation in social mobility in Britain

Abstract

There is increasing interest among sociologists in geographical, or regional, variation in intergenerational mobility. The most important questions in studying this topic are, first, whether, and how much, variation there is between regions, and to what extent this is due to characteristics of places themselves, and how far to sorting or compositional differences—that is, to the spatial distribution of relevant individual and family variables. We analyse regional variation in social mobility in Great Britain, first asking whether there are differences in occupational attainment and intergenerational social mobility according to where a person was raised, and then asking whether these differences persist or disappear when we control for individual family factors that are known to influence social mobility. We also discuss some methodological problems that arise in trying to answer these questions: these have largely been neglected in the burgeoning literature on this topic. Overall, we find little evidence for any substantial effects of place of origin on social mobility in Britain once we take account of sorting.