Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

62 Chapter 2
comparisons. Intergenerational vertical mobility occurs when an individual
rises above or falls below the class ranking of his or her parents (e.g., an individual
with working-class parents rises as an adult to membership in the
superclass). Intragenerational vertical mobility occurs when an individual
rises above or falls below the class ranking he or she held at an earlier point
in adult life without reference to his or her parents’ class ranking (e.g., a
physician who, for whatever reasons, falls to a position as a laborer). Social
mobility also can be horizontal, as might occur when an adult worker moves
from one occupation of average prestige and pay to another with similar
prestige and pay levels. 87
When sociologists track vertical social mobility, those using functionalist
models typically utilize a combination of income, job prestige, and educational
attainment as indicators of class. Production model advocates are more
likely to focus on an individual’s role in the production process (laborer, manager,
owner) as a guide to class rank. Functionalist model studies of vertical social
mobility in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, using occupational
prestige rankings as indicators of class position, found substantial occupational
mobility occurring mainly in an upward direction. By contrast, production
model studies focusing on capitalist property ownership as an indicator
of class found little evidence of intergenerational mobility into the “capitalist
property ownership class” in the 1980s and 1990s. 88 More recent research
(based largely on functionalist and income-based approaches) indicates upward
intergenerational mobility rates in the United States were lower in the
1990s and early 2000s than in the 1970s. 89
Downward mobility refers to the experience of falling in terms of socialclass
membership. The concept has been used as way of summarizing the
economic, social, and psychological losses many middle-income (or above)
workers have experienced due to job losses and other forms of economic restructuring
in the United States. The label spotlights the “falling from grace”
experience of middle-income workers displaced from their jobs and often
discovering they cannot find new work that will replace the income, health,
pension, and job security benefits of their former jobs. For many workers,
the results of job loss include sharp, permanently impaired living standards,
diminished long-term economic security, anger, self-doubt, depression,
guilt, and dislocated personal relationships. 90
The term downward mobility was initially applied by researchers to the job
displacement experiences of blue-collar workers who lost jobs due to plant
closings, automation, or layoffs. More recently, the term has also been applied
to diverse types of workers, including managerial and professional white-collar
employees who have lost their jobs due to corporate practices such as “restructuring,”
“outsourcing,” and “downsizing.” As a result of social science research
and media coverage of factory closings and related job losses dating from the
1980s to the present, downward mobility entered the public lexicon as a label
for what came to be a high-profile, savage, and persistent social trend. 91