Annu. Rev. Sociol. 1991. 17.’277-302
Copyright © 1991 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
COMPARATIVE
INTERGENERATIONAL
STRATIFICATION RESEARCH:
Generations and Beyond
Three
Harry B. G. Ganzeboom
1
Department of Sociology, Nijmegen University, 6500 HK Nijmegen, Netherlands*
Donald J. Treiman
Department of Sociology, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA
90024
Wout C. Ultee
Department of Sociology, Nijmegen University, 6500 HK Nijmegen, Netherlands
KEY WORDS: social stratification, social mobility, cross-national research
Abstract
In this article we review 40 years of cross-national comparative research on
the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic advantage, with particu-
lax attention to developments over the past 15 years--that is, since the
transition between (what have become known as) the second and third genera-
tions of social stratification and mobility research. We identify the genera-
1During the preparation of this paper Ganzeboom held a Huygens Scholarship from the
Netherlands’ Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and was a Visiting Scholar in the
Department of Sociology, University of California at Los Angeles.
277
0360-0572/91/0815-0277502.00
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278 GANZEBOOM, TREIMAN & ULTEE
tions by a set of core studies and categorize them with respect to data
collection, measurement, analytical models, research problems, main hypoth-
eses, and substantive results. We go on to discuss a number of new topics and
approaches that have gained prominence in the research agenda in the last
decade. We conclude that the field has progressed considerably with respect
to data collection and measurement; that shifts across generations with respect
to data analytic and modelling strategies do not unambiguously represent
advances; and that with respect to problem development and theory formula-
tion the field has become excessively narrow.
INTRODUCTION
The study of the transmission of socioeconomic advantage from generation to
generation is one of the core problems in sociology. From the turn of the
century, empirical material has been collected on this topic (Pcrrin 1904).
From the outset, cross-national and cross-temporal comparisons have had a
central role, since such comparisons provide the only way to determine
whether, to what extent, and in what ways the intergenerational transmission
of advantage is dependent upon other aspects of social organization, and what
its consequences are.
The history of intergenerational stratification research is commonly divided
into three generations (Featherman et al 1974): a first (post-war) generation
broad social stratification studies using relatively simple statistical tech-
niques, and in which occupational mobility figured as only one issue among
many; a second generation dominated by path models of educational and
occupational status attainment; and a third generation dominated by loglinear
models of occupational mobility. The three generations differ most sub-
stantially with respect to (a) methods of data collection, (b) measurement
procedures, and (c) methods of data analysis. Development has been more
gradual with respect to (d) the definition of research problems and (e)
specification of major hypotheses. These five dimensions will be the lines
along which we identify significant developments.
We are well aware that the three generations are not distinct with respect to
all five dimensions, nor are they very clearly separated in time. Nevertheless,
it remains instructive to review the history of this field by characterizing each
generation by a core of exemplary studies and by considering the successive
generations in developmental perspective. We are relatively brief in our
discussion of the first and the second generations, since they have been dealt
with elsewhere (Hazelrigg 1974, Mayer 1979, Matras 1980, Featherman
1981, Simkus 1981, Campbell 1983, Kerckhoff 1984), and more detailed in
our review of the third generation and subsequent developments. Our review
of the third generation covers part of the same ground as Kurz & MiJller
(1987), but with different conclusions.
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COMPARATIVE STRATIFICATION RESEARCH 279
Our topic, intergenerational stratification research (or "social mobility" as
understood by the first generation), includes both bivariate accounts of the
transfer of status positions from parents to their offspring and multivariate
accounts of the same processes, where, minimally, educational achievement
is studied as an intervening variable. We also include some discussion of the
consequences of social mobility. We exclude those issues in stratification
research that do not have immediate intergenerational aspects, such as income
attainment and worklife mobility (Kurz & MOiler 1987, Kalleberg 1988).
Unfortunately, we also have to exclude from review the intergenerational
transfer of material possessions (other than through occupational inheritance),
not because it does not occur but because this topic has scarcely been dealt
with in the literature (Cheal 1983).
THE FIRST GENERATION
Although Sorokin’s (1959 [ 1927]) Social Mobility is generally acknowledged
as the starting point of (comparative) social stratification and mobility re-
search in modem sociology (Heath 1981), only after the Second World War
did systematic national studies begin to appear. A monograph by Glass (1954)
on 1949 data for England and Wales was the impetus for the establishment of
the Research Committee on Social Stratification and Social Mobility of the
International Sociological Association, which since its founding has been a
major locus of scientific exchange, data sharing, and international collabora-
tion. At Glass’s instigation, a group of researchers from 12 countries decided
in 1950 to collect data using a common framework (Rokkan 1951). This
common framework included, among other elements, periodic national social
stratification and mobility surveys in each of the countries, to investigate the
determinants of social mobility and its consequences for "class identification
and class antagonism" (Svalastoga 1959:22), and the creation of an occupa-
tional prestige scale in each country as a basis for measuring intergenerational
relationships. These plans were realized in some, but not all, of the countries.
Svalastoga’s (1959) monograph on Denmark based on his 1953 survey re-
mains the best known example, but similar plans were carried through in 1955
in Japan (JSSRC 1956, 1958) and in 1954 in the Netherlands (van Tulder
1962). Monographs following the main lines of the agenda were written on
1954 Puerto Rican data (Tumin & Feldman 1961) and 1954 Swedish data
(Carlsson 1958). The first generation research gained a comparative thrust
through the work of Lipset & Zetterberg (1956), Lipset & Bendix (1959),
and, in particular, Miller (1960). Lipset and Zetterberg compiled a set
fourteen 3*3 and 2*2 intergenerational mobility tables for 10 countries and
concentrated only on manual/nonmanual mobility; the Miller analysis in-
cluded 20 tables of varying size and breadth of coverage for 17 countries and
investigated more detailed types of social mobility (e.g. elite mobility).
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280 GANZEBOOM, TREIMAN & ULTEE
Research in the style of the first generation continued well after the main
focus shifted to second generation research. Several researchers have com-
piled collections of published mobility tables and analyzed them with methods
more or less similar to those utilized by Lipset & Bendix and by Miller. The
Miller collection of tables was extended and reanalyzed by several researchers
(Marsh 1963, Fox & Miller 1965, Svalastoga 1965, Lenski 1966, Cutright
1968, Jones 1969, McClendon 1980, Raftery 1985). An entirely new collec-
tion of tables from studies conducted subsequent to 1960 was created by
Hazelrigg (Hazelrigg 1974, Hazelrigg &Garnier 1976). Some of the same
data were employed by Tyree et al (1979), who analyzed 24 2*2 tables, and
Grusky & Hauser (1984), who analyzed 16 3*3 tables. However, whereas the
last two articles employ some of the data and data collection methods of the
first generation, they used third generation analytic methods.
Although the common framework for the first generation studies included
national occupational prestige inquiries as a basis for determining occupation-
al status, in the end most published tables were not based on prestige scale
scores. Instead, .each researcher prozluced an ad hoc occupational classifica-
tion. As a result, comparability across studies could only be obtained by
collapsing the original occupational classifications into three highly aggre-
gated categories: farm, manual, and nonmanual occupations; moreover, in
some studies only a manual/nonmanual distinction was made. Collapsing into
these two or three category schemes proved for many years to be the only
means of obtaining co~nparability between published mobility tables from
different countries. But in some cases comparability could not be achieved
even in this way. Interestingly, the tables most often used to illustrate new
mobility models--those for England & Wales and Denmark---cannot be
collapsed into nonmanual, manual, and farm occupations and are therefore
mostly excluded from later comparative studies. ~
Methodologically, much of the analysis in the first generation involved
little more than the inspedtion of inflow and outflow percentages (Lipset
Zetterberg 1956, Miller 1960). However, some researchers recognized that
observed mobility rates are a function of the marginal distributions and
therefore cannot be used for comparative analyses. Several proposals were put
forward to distinguish observed mobility rates from mobility chances net of
differences in marginal distributions. The renowned "mobility ratio" was
more or less independently arrived at by Glass (1954), Goldhamer & Rogoff
(Rogoff 1979 [1953]), and Carlsson (1958), but it turned out to be inadequate
to accomplish the separation of net mobility chances from the marginal
distributions (Tyree 1973, Hauser 1978).
~The reason for this, ironically, was that Glass and Svalastoga did use prestige for occupation-
al scaling (as envisioned in the original ISA plan).
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COMPARATIVE STRATIFICATION RESEARCH
281
The basic comparative question of this generation was to what extent and in
what ways countries differ in their mobility patterns. The best remembered
conclusion is that of Lipset & Zetterberg (in Lipset & Bendix 1959; see also
Lipset & Zetterberg 1956) that "the overall pattern of social mobility appears
to be much the same in the industrial societies of various Western countries,"
which was offered in reaction to the prevailing assumption that the United
States, as a "new" nation, would exhibit more intergenerational mobility than
other western industrial nations. But the conclusion has not withstood early
(Miller 1960) and later (Jones 1969, Hazelrigg 1974) reanalyses.
A second important hypothesis was that mobility rates tend to be higher in
industrialized societies than in nonindustrialized societies (Fox & Miller
1965, Lenski 1966:410-17). Fox & Miller, Lenski, and several other re-
searchers as well, found a positive relationship between indicators of eco-
nomic development and indicators of social mobility (Marsh 1963, Cutright
1968, Hazelrigg 1974), but their substantive conclusions have been contested
by Goldthorpe (1985).
A third concern of the first generation researchers was the effect of political
structure on the extent of intergenerational mobility. Fox & Miller (1965)
claimed to find a relation between the degree of political stability and the
amount of mobility. Connor (1979) argued that state socialist regimes pro-
mote social mobility and found some support for this proposition in an
analysis of intergenerational mobility rates in Eastern European countries.
Interestingly, there were many ancillary research questions in this genera-
tion, but only two were addressed comparatively. One was the consequences
of mobility for voting behavior. Lipset & Bendix’s (1959) five country
comparison claimed to find clear evidence of a mobility effect. Some subse-
quent comparative studies also have dealt with this issue (Barber 1970,
Abramson 1973), but this topic migrated from stratification research to
political science and has received little subsequent attention in either disci-
pline. The other was whether occupational prestige hierarchies in different
countries are similar; the tentative answer of Inkeles & Rossi (1956), later
confirmed rigorously by Treiman (1977), was that they are.
Many other ancillary research questions were posed in one country or
another but received little comparative attention, e.g. the extent of assortative
mating by social origins and by education (Hall 1954), the effect of social
mobility on fertility (Berent 1954), and the effect of social status on life style
(Svalastoga et al 1956, Svalastoga 1959). Finally, many researchers were
aware of the pivotal role of educational attainment in the intergenerational
transmission of advantage (Glass 1954, Carlsson 1958, Tumin & Feldman
1961); but, given the limited statistical models available then, they were not
able to answer the crucial question: how much (im)mobility is mediated
through education.
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