Social Mobility Flashcards

Flashcards based on lecture notes about social mobility.

Vertical Mobility

A change in socioeconomic rank (upward or downward) relative to the overall hierarchy.

Horizontal Mobility

A job or role change that leaves overall status roughly unchanged.

Intergenerational Mobility

Status change of children compared with their parents, often measured with income ranks.

Intragenerational Mobility

Status changes occurring within one individual’s lifetime or career.

Structural Mobility

Large-scale economic shifts create new slots, moving whole cohorts regardless of individual merit.

Circulation (Exchange) Mobility

Mobility produced by reshuffling positions—some rise and an equal number fall, keeping overall structure the.

Absolute Mobility

Whether you earn more (inflation-adjusted) than your parents did.

Relative Mobility

Whether you move to a higher or lower percentile within the income or status distribution.

Upward Mobility

Net movement to a higher class or status category.

Downward Mobility

Net movement to a lower class or status category.

Status Inconsistency

Possessing mismatched levels of income, education, and prestige (e.g., wealthy plumber).

Rank–Rank Slope

Statistical measure of persistence: child income rank regressed on parent rank (0 = full mobility, 1 = no mobi.

Transition Matrix

Table showing movements between parental and child quintiles; diagonal = immobile.

Great Gatsby Curve

Cross-national pattern: higher inequality correlates with lower intergenerational mobility.

Life-Cycle Earnings Profile

Graph of an individual’s earnings across age, used to study intragenerational change.