Period changes in men’s class reproduction in Scotland, Cristina Iannelli University of Edinburgh

ESRC project “Education and Social Mobility in Scotland in the 20 th Century” Aims of the project: to provide an up-to-date study of social mobility in Scotland to investigate the role played by education in the process of social mobility between generations Background to the project: Payne, 1987; Goldthorpe, 1987; Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992, Breen and Luijkx, 2004

ESRC project “Education and Social Mobility in Scotland in the 20 th Century” Data and methodology: 2001 Scottish Household Survey, 1999 British Household Panel Survey, 1974 Scottish Mobility Study Mobility tables, odds ratios, log-linear models and logistic regression

Period changes in social mobility The main aim of this paper: To analyse changes in social mobility patterns (absolute and relative) across the whole of the 20 th century Data from the 1974 SMS and the 2001 SHS

The 1974 Scottish Mobility Study Cross-sectional survey of men aged resident in Scotland and Inner Isles Our sample: men born between 1910 and 1949 (at most 4079 cases)

The 2001 Scottish Household Survey Large cross-sectional survey commissioned by the Scottish Executive in 1998 and running annually The 2001 module of questions on parental occupation Our sample: men born between 1937 and 1976 (at most 3633 cases)

The EGP class schema The 5-class schema (collapsed version of the 7-class schema): Class I-II: Service class Class III: Routine non-manual workers Class IV: Petty bourgeoisie Class V-VI: Skilled workers Class VII: Non-skilled workers

Main methods Mobility tables to measure absolute mobility Loglinear models to measure relative mobility Uniform Difference (Unidiff) model (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992) to examine changes in the strength of the OD association between 1974 and 2001

Some descriptive statistics

Absolute mobility

Relative mobility

Relative mobility (cont.)

A long term perspective The paper relies on cross-sectional data from only two time points The two datasets were combined to create a time series of successive birth- cohorts constructed as one year moving averages (Yaish 2004)

Mobility rates - Men aged by birth-cohorts Total mobility Upward mobility Downward mobility

Changes in the strength of the OD association across birth-cohorts (Unidiff parameter estimates)

Conclusions In The Constant Flux (1992) Scotland was one of the least fluid societies in Europe Most recent data indicate that patterns of social mobility in Scotland are not different from the rest of Great Britain and other European countries This paper shows that, differently from the rest of Great Britain, social fluidity has increased in Scotland However, this has occurred at a very low pace and over a long period of time