Structural’ Factors
OCCUPATIONAL STRUCTURE.
Societies differ in the relative proportion of high- and low status positions to be filled. A society with a primarily agricultural and extractive economy’ (mining ‘and forestry) will have many low status and few high-status positions, and mobility will be low. The rate of mobility rises·
With the degree of industrialization in both the capitalist and socialist countries [Simkus, 1981, pp. ~227]. Americans principally employed in agriculture dropped from nearly 5.4 million ill 1950 to 1.3 million in 1978 [Statistical Abstract, 1959, p. 209; 1981, p. 662], even while population was growing by about 50 percent. Most people in the developing countries are still in an agricultural and extractive economy leaving limited opportunity for upward mobility.