SOCIAL MOBILITY SUMMARY

Social mobility is movement up or down in social status and (usually) income and may Transportable experienced by individuals or by entire groups. Upward- mobility brings increased life satisfactions as well as anxieties  class society encourages much movement up and down the mobility ladder, while in a closed class or caste society,. class status is inherited and is very difficult to change.

The amount of upward mobility is affected by structural factors, including the proportion of higher-status positions. available, differential fertility, and a society's mobility aids and barriers. Individual factors in mobility include ability differences, differences in mobility- oriented behavior (education, work habits, the DGP, mobility "game playing," and value stretch), and the luck factor. • Mobility prospects depend upon-the continued growth of high-status positions, and these depend upon technological chan6e and economic growth. Mobility for married women has been determined mainly by their husbands' status, but women's own occupational status is growing more 'important today. The poor Third World countries resent the affluence of the wealthy countries and demand assistance in closing the gap. Population growth and growing resource shortages and capital shortages make it difficult for ·them to do so. . In the (mixed-economy) countries, transfer payments with progressive taxation reduce inequalities between rich and poor. Middle-class objections to-high ~axes make it questionable whether there will be any further reductions in economic inequality · in the capitalist countries.