Why do people perceive themselves as being downwardly or upwardly mobile?

Abstract

This study explores individual and contextual explanations of why some people perceive themselves as being mobile and others do not. While subjective social position in recent decades has become an important topic of sociological enquiry, only a handful of studies explicitly investigate the nature of subjective perception of intergenerational mobility. When assessing their performance in comparison to their parents, individuals are likely to consider many other aspects of their lives than the attainment of socio-economic position. For empirical analysis, I operationalise an objective indicator of intergenerational mobility, often assumed to be the central explanation of perceptions of mobility, by means of intergenerational educational trajectories. In addition to exploring individual-level explanations, I use multilevel mixed-effects Poisson regression models to test how contextual environment is associated with perceived intergenerational mobility across 35 societies in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. Results indicate that an objective measure of intergenerational mobility and other individual-level factors are important explanations of subjective intergenerational mobility. Further, the difference in economic development between individuals’ birth years and the year of interview is the most salient contextual factor explaining perceived intergenerational mobility, while contemporary economic development and short-term economic growth also reduce the likelihood of perceived downward mobility. The findings of this study contribute to sociological literature by highlighting the importance of contextual environment and factors beyond socio-economic characteristics for individuals’ perception of intergenerational mobility.

Trends and Disparities in Subjective Upward Mobility since 1940

“…Subjective data are an important complement to conventional status indicators and may detect trends not reflected in these measures. Lived mobility experiences matter in their own right but also as an implicit component in models of how socioeconomic factors influence attitudes, behavior, and well-being (Chan 2018; Gugushvili 2020; Kaiser and Trinh 2019; Newman 1999; Paskov, Präg, and Richards 2020). Not least is this evident in recent discussion of the precipitous rise in “deaths of despair” associated with alcohol, drugs, and self-harm.…”

The psychology of lay beliefs about economic mobility

“…Second, beliefs about mobility are affected by whether people construe it in terms of past or future mobility. When thinking about what economic mobility was like in the past , people tend to draw from their own experiences (Day & Fiske, 2019), from their distorted beliefs about past economic conditions (e.g., Kraus et al., 2017), and from historic national trends (Gugushvili, 2020; Kelley & Kelley, 2009). In contrast, expectations of mobility in the future may be influenced by people's focus on individual effort (Helzer & Gilovich, 2012) and their general optimism about the future (Weinstein, 1980).…”

“…How people think about economic mobility may be further affected by the broader macroeconomic environment. For instance, lay beliefs in mobility are stronger during times of economic growth, especially long periods of growth that occur throughout one's lifetime (e.g., Gugushvili, 2020; Kelley & Kelley, 2009). To the extent that economic growth improves the general standards of living in society and fosters optimism about the future, it may prime people to construe mobility in terms of their future absolute upward prospects (e.g., whether they are bound to make more money than they used to), a construal that tends to strengthen their lay beliefs.…”

Which socio-economic comparison groups do individuals choose and why?

“…It is known that many individuals in these countries express nostalgia for the failed communist past, which could then serve also as a reference point for socio-economic comparisons (Ådnanes 2007;Bartmanski 2011). The importance of socio-economic comparison across time is also implicated in Hirschman and Rothschild's (1973) 'tunnel effect' thesis, which suggests that, when assessing their relative standing, individuals are likely to make temporal socio-economic comparisons (Gugushvili 2020).…”