MEASURING SOCIAL CLASS AND MOBILITY

Major use of occupation in classifying.

MEASURING SOCIAL CLASS

Occupations most common. The Registrar General's Classification is often used in government and other surveys.  It groups households into six types. Goldthorpe devised an alternative based on pay and working conditions, used in the Oxford Mobility Studies.

EVALUATION OF CLASSIFICATIONS BASED ON OCCUPATION

The Trouble With Women

  • Housewives are excluded as non-workers. 
  • Women often seem higher classes then men, but 'women's jobs' are often in the lower levels of each grouping, eg. nursing and teaching.
  • Women often earn less than men in the same group and there can be less chance of promotion.
  • Classifying manual and non-manual is less useful applied to females as many poor service jobs are classified as non-manual. 
  • Wives and children are often classified by male head of household.
  • Feminists claim that all women are proletarianized by their exploitation in the home and possibly in the workplace.

Other Problems

  • Ownership not measured, the rich are not included and the poor and unemployed also not.
  • Job ranking can be based on status, is open to debate and can change.
  • Skills are evaluated, and this is subjective eg. women's skills are valued less just because it's women who have them.

Positive Points

Occupation is a good indicator of life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures of health. Parent's occupations predict educational achievement, particularly in the light of both parent's class.
 

SOCIAL MOBILITY

What is Social Mobility

Up or down the class structure. Intragenerational mobility is within a person's working life. Intergenerational mobility compares the classes of parents and children.

What are the Causes of Social Mobility?

  • Changes in the occupational Structure eg. declining working class.
  • Educational reforms.
  • Lower birth rates
  • Equal opportunities.
  • Women tend to marry men in the same or higher classes.

WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MOBILITY?

Open societies have more intergenerational mobility than closed societies. Less class conflict. People strive individually rather than collective struggles. Functionalists have said that mobility is necessary to ensure the best people do the most important jobs.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS OF MEASURING SOCIAL MOBILITY?

  • Father's final position is compared with possibly temporary one for sons.
  • Records of father's occupations may be unreliable.
  • Job ranking changes over time.
  • Comparison over time is hard as different job classifications have been used.
  • Studying only two generations may conceal the sons of downwardly mobile fathers returning to their original position.
  • Women's classification is hard as they were excluded from major studies (eg. Glass, Godlthorpe). Heath found that women were more often downwardly mobile.
  • Jobs included in Goldthorpe's service class were so varied that top jobs were included with middle class jobs with average pay.
  • Studies can ignore the rich and the unemployed.

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