Toward Open Societies? Trends in Male
Intergenerational Class Mobility in European
Countries during Industrialization1
Ineke Maas and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen
Utrecht University
Do the observed increases in intergenerational mobility in European
societies in recent decades have their origin in 19th-century industrialization, as is posited by the industrialization thesis? Using over
600,000 marriage records and an internationally and historically
comparative measure of occupational class, the authors study total
and relative intergenerational mobility of men in Britain, Finland,
France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden between
1800 and 1914. For these countries together and for most countries
separately the preindustrial period was characterized by stable or decreasing total and relative mobility, whereas a trend toward greater
mobility took place during industrialization, lending qualified support to the industrialization thesis.
INTRODUCTION
The degree to which men and women can escape their class of birth during
their life course is a perennial question in both the social sciences and public
1
This research was supported by the European Research Council (Advanced Grant
no. 230279, 2009–14), “Toward Open Societies? Trends, Variations and Driving Forces
of Intergenerational Social Mobility in Europe over the Past Three Centuries.” We thank
the participants at the RC28 meeting in Trento, 2013, the MaSS seminar at Utrecht University and the SILC seminar at the VU Amsterdam, and the AJS reviewers for their
helpful comments. And we are especially grateful to all researchers who made their
data available to us. Direct correspondence to Ineke Maas, Department of Sociology/
ICS, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, 3584 CH Utrecht, the Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected]
© 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/2016/12203-0005$10.00
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
discourse. In closed societies those born into lower classes have few opportunities to improve their position, regardless of how hard they try or how
talented they are. Closed societies are often thought to be a phenomenon
of the past, of which only a few remnants have survived. The Industrial Revolution, starting in Britain and spreading over Europe during the 19th century, is often viewed as having been the starting point of a trend toward both
more total mobility (i.e., an increase in the percentage of men or women in a
class different from that of their parents) as well as more relative mobility (i.e.,
more equal relative chances of men and women from different classes of origin to reach certain classes of destination) (Inkeles 1960; Kerr et al. 1960;
Blau and Duncan 1967; Form 1979). In this study we investigate this claim.
We ask how total and relative mobility from father to son in European societies changed as these countries developed from preindustrial to industrial societies. Our focus is thus on the first countries that industrialized (countries
that industrialized later, in an already partly industrialized world, are not
the topic of the original theoretical claim and may show different effects of
industrialization). Our focus is on men only. Although we use very rich data,
there is not enough information on women’s class position to include women
in the analysis.
Our study is a new addition to the research tradition in which changes
in mobility patterns are studied in several countries against the background
of historical change, however, without explicitly modeling the effects of
these changes. Several country-specific studies have shown increasing total
or relative mobility for the second half of the 20th century (e.g., Erikson
[1983] and Jonsson and Mills [1993] for Sweden, Goldthorpe and Portocarero [1981] and Thélot [1982] for France, Wong and Hauser [1992]
for Hungary, and Ganzeboom et al. [1987] for the Netherlands). But in
other countries such a trend has not been found (e.g., Erikson, Goldthorpe,
and Portocarero [1983] for Britain, and Ishida, Goldthorpe, and Erikson
[1991] for Japan). Erikson and Goldthorpe [1992] investigated changes in
total and relative mobility comparatively in a range of countries. In 1992
they published The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial
Societies, the result of more than 10 years of studying trends and country
differences in total and relative mobility (see, e.g., Erikson et al. 1979,
1982, 1983). The aim of The Constant Flux was to describe rates and patterns of intergenerational class mobility in industrial societies, with special
reference to the extent of change and variation, constancy, and commonality (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992, p. 2). Using data collected in the 1970s,
they compared nine countries (England and Wales, France, the Federal
Republic of Germany, Hungary, the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, Poland, Scotland, and Sweden). Birth cohorts were compared in order to allow
conclusions to be drawn about changes in mobility between approximately
1935 and 1970. Erikson and Goldthorpe studied both total and relative
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American Journal of Sociology
mobility. They concluded that there was no evidence of general trends toward higher levels of total mobility or relative mobility, nor evidence that
relative mobility rates were changing in any consistent direction, nor evidence that these rates showed a tendency over time to become more similar cross-nationally. In other words, mobility patterns were in a constant
flux.
The conclusions of Erikson and Goldthorpe were contested even before
their study had been published. In a study of 35 countries, Ganzeboom,
Luijkx, and Treiman (1989) found major differences in relative mobility
between countries and a trend toward greater openness between 1947
and 1987. They concluded that the relative mobility of men had increased
slowly and that this increase was a global phenomenon. The fact that the
two groups of researchers reached different conclusions is often explained
by differences in data and method. Ganzeboom et al. not only included
more countries in their study, they also analyzed several mobility tables
per country. The chronological spread of these tables allowed them to draw
conclusions about trends without having to rely on birth cohorts. Another
possible explanation is that their study covered a period that ended 15 years
later than that studied by Erikson and Goldthorpe and thus for example
included the economic crisis of the early 1980s.2 Based on a reanalysis of
a subset of the data of Ganzeboom et al. (1989), Wong (1992) doubted
whether the increase of relative mobility was as global as suggested.
Social Mobility in Europe (Breen 2004) appeared as a followup to the
study by Erikson and Goldthorpe for a more recent period, covering the
early 1970s to the late 1990s. Eleven countries are compared: Britain,
France, Ireland, West Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Norway,
Poland, Hungary, and Israel. This period was characterized by extended
periods of low economic growth and several economic recessions to which
countries responded with quite different social policies. As a consequence,
changes in mobility patterns over time and differences between countries
were expected. These expectations were supported by the evidence (Breen
and Luijkx 2004). The authors found a convergent trend across countries
in total mobility. Countries differed in their level of relative mobility, with
Germany, France, Italy, and Ireland showing less mobility than the rest.
Finally, there was a widespread tendency toward greater relative mobility,
except in the cases of Britain and Germany.
In the present study, we extend the period of investigation covered by
Erikson and Goldthorpe in the other direction. We study trends in the to2
The study of Ganzeboom, Luijkx, and Treiman (1989) also covers earlier birth cohorts
than the study of Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992), but not in all countries. Since birth cohorts are not distinguished in Ganzeboom et al. (1989), it is not clear how this affected the
results.
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
tal intergenerational class mobility of men and trends in relative mobility
in seven countries (Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden) in the period 1800–1914. This is the first time that
intergenerational mobility has been studied in a comparative way for this
many countries and for such a long period. The historical extension of previous studies is essential because the main hypothesis on changes in intergenerational class mobility, also used in the studies by Ganzeboom et al.
(1989), Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992), and Breen (2004), refers to the transition from preindustrial to industrial societies. This hypothesis can thus
be properly tested only by reference to an earlier period. As a by-product,
our analyses can also shed light on the question whether the trend toward more mobility in the second half of the 20th century, as observed
by Ganzeboom et al. (1989), Breen (2004), and a range of country-specific
studies, was the continuation of a trend starting during the Industrial
Revolution. Alternatively, it has a bearing on the point of view of Erikson
and Goldthorpe (1992) and Wong (1992) that a consistent trend over a
broad range of countries did not take place, not recently and not in the
19th century.
Why has the question on changes in intergenerational mobility during industrialization not yet been answered? Sociologists studying intergenerational mobility have mainly used survey data, and these data go back no
further than the 1940s. Using retrospective data and birth cohorts, analyses
can be extended to the beginning of the 20th century, but no further. In
many developed countries the transition from a preindustrial to an industrial society was well underway by then. Historians, on the other hand,
have used vital registers—that is, birth, marriage, and death registers—
with occupational titles, which made it possible for researchers to track intergenerational change back further into the past. Until recently, though,
gathering these data, sometimes linking data from several generations,
and classifying occupational information from the sources in a comparable
way, was very cumbersome and time consuming. Therefore, these studies
were often restricted to small regions or compared only a few years (see
the reviews by Kaelble [1981, 1985] and Miles and Vincent [1993]). This prevented firm conclusions being drawn about country-wide and long-term
changes.
The practical problems that inhibited the analysis of large amounts of
historical data on intergenerational mobility have recently been resolved.
In many European countries a sizable proportion of historical vital registers has now been digitized. A classification system geared to occupational
titles from historical sources in different countries has been developed (van
Leeuwen, Maas, and Miles 2002, 2004), along with a corresponding class
scheme (van Leeuwen and Maas 2011). For the first time ever it is now
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American Journal of Sociology
possible to answer the question whether total and relative mobility in European societies increased as they developed from preindustrial to industrial societies.
HYPOTHESIZED EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
ON INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY
Total Mobility
According to the “logic of industrialism” school, the total extent of intergenerational mobility in countries was lower before industrialization than after
industrialization. Furthermore, proponents of this school argued that prior
to industrialization the differences between countries were greater than
afterward (Inkeles 1960; Kerr et al. 1973 [1960]; Form 1979). Industrialization was thought to have caused an increase in total mobility and a convergence of mobility patterns, for several reasons. During industrialization the
size of certain classes, notably the farming class, decreased and that of other
classes increased. As a consequence men were “forced” to leave the class of
their father. Furthermore, managers in industrial societies recruited more
on the basis of achievement instead of ascription in order to increase efficiency and decrease risks, thereby also decreasing the influence of a father’s
class on that of his son. The attitude of workers to the world in general and
labor market opportunities in particular also changed. Workers are said to
have embraced modern universalistic values and to have responded by investing more in the education of their children and by grasping opportunities for upward mobility. Scholars from the logic of industrialism school
expected a change in the extent of total mobility during industrialization,
and that change would be both sizable and limited in duration. As soon
as countries became industrialized, the mobility rate would remain stable
at a high level.
The reasoning followed by the logic of industrialism school is embodied
in the classic Lipset and Zetterberg hypothesis (LZ hypothesis) of 1959,
which states that social mobility became relatively high in societies once
industrialization had reached a certain level there. A comparison of industrialized societies would show similar degrees of intergenerational mobility.
Interestingly, Lipset and Zetterberg presented an overview of the determinants of change in mobility within industrialized societies: (1) changes in
the number of vacancies; (2) different rates of fertility (of high- and lowstatus groups); (3) changes in the rank accorded to occupations; (4) changes
in the number of inheritable status positions; and (5) changes in the legal
restrictions pertaining to potential opportunities. However, the phrasing
of their argument seems to imply that these determinants were either not
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
very important (for instance, with regard to changes in the rank of occupations), or similar in all industrialized countries, because, all told, Lipset and
Zetterberg expected total mobility to be stable and similar in industrialized
countries.
Fukumoto and Grusky (1993) juxtaposed the threshold interpretation
of the effect of industrialism with the view that class-based differences in
mobility slowly withered away as universalistic values gradually spread
and bureaucratic personnel systems were established. Among sociologists,
this latter version of the industrialization thesis has found widespread currency (e.g., Blau and Duncan 1967; Treiman 1970), probably due to their
focus on recent decades. For the period that we are studying, it is not possible to distinguish between the two interpretations of the industrialization
hypothesis, because industrialization was still underway at the end of our
period (1914).
Reviews of historical studies conclude that total mobility did not in general increase during industrialization (Kaelble 1981, 1985; Schüren 1989).
But it should be noted that these studies related to samples of small size
and few points in time. Furthermore, the problem of noncomparability
of results due to the absence of internationally comparable classification
systems had not yet been resolved, thus leaving open a very wide margin
of error. An interesting contrasting conclusion had earlier been drawn by
Sorokin ([1929] 1959). Although his conclusion that “there seems to be no
definite perpetual trend toward either an increase or a decrease of . . . mobility” is often cited (p. 152), he also concluded that “within Western societies during the last century there seems to have existed a trend toward a decrease of inheritance of occupation” (p. 458); the last century is, in this
respect, the period 1829–1929.
When comparing total intergenerational mobility between industrial societies, sociologists concluded that these societies differ greatly. In some
countries the proportion of men reaching a class different from that of their
father is much higher than in other countries (for reviews, see Ganzeboom,
Treiman, and Ultee 1991; Fukumoto and Grusky 1993; van Leeuwen and
Maas 2010). The lack of support for the LZ hypothesis in industrial societies
led most sociologists to abandon the study of total mobility and to turn to
studying relative mobility (e.g., Featherman, Jones, and Hauser 1975; but
for exceptions see Simkus 1984 and Hout 1988). However, the conclusions
of historical and sociological studies still leave us with the question where
the observed contemporary country differences came from. Did similar
country differences exist two centuries ago? Or were they even greater in
preindustrial and industrializing societies, as the industrialization thesis
predicts, and were historical studies just too small and too short term to uncover the changes?
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American Journal of Sociology
Relative Mobility
After having rejected the LZ hypothesis of cross-country similarity in total
mobility in industrial societies, Featherman et al. (1975) formulated an
alternative hypothesis on cross-country similarities in relative mobility in
such societies. They stated that “circulation mobility” in industrial societies with a market economy and a nuclear family system is basically the
same. This hypothesis differs from that of Lipset and Zetterberg not
only in its focus on relative mobility but also because it restricts itself to
Western types of industrial society and excludes societies lacking a market economy or a nuclear family system. Erikson and Goldthorpe (1987,
p. 162) also pointed out a restriction to the generalizability of their findings: “A basic similarity will be found in patterns of social fluidity . . .
across all nations with market economics and nuclear family systems
where no sustained attempt has been made to use the power of the modern
state apparatus in order to modify the processes, or the outcomes of the
processes, through which class inequalities are produced and intergenerationally reproduced.”
The similarity in relative mobility within and among Western industrialized societies over time is explained by the fact that in all these societies
work activities are organized in basically the same way. As a result, occupational hierarchies show a large degree of cross-national commonality—
which is reflected in broad similarities in both the desirability or prestige
of different occupational groupings and their objective “socioeconomic”
attributes, such as education and income (Featherman et al. 1975). In
all industrial societies, thus, men strive to reach the same desirable class
positions, but men from higher classes of origin have more resources to
draw on in these attempts and are more likely to succeed. Featherman
et al. do not explicitly compare industrial with nonindustrial societies.
However, from what they write one can deduce that within the agricultural sector work is organized in a way different from that in the industrial sector. Possession of land is the most important resource in the agricultural sector and land is—as far as possible—kept within the family.
As a result, preindustrial, agrarian societies are less open than industrial
societies.
Featherman et al. (1975) did not assume that industrial societies would
become more open over time, but others did. According to Blau and Duncan (1967), this change was driven by a pervasive concern with efficiency in
industrial societies. As a consequence, objective evaluation criteria became
necessary, in the workplace as well as at school. A high position could no
longer be directly inherited; it had to be legitimated by actual achievements
that were socially acknowledged, that is, educational achievement. And in
order to fill the increasing number of positions at the top of the occupational
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
hierarchy, higher levels of education were opened up to children from lower
strata.
Results of studies of relative mobility in past societies are even less conclusive than those of total mobility. Some studies found an increase in relative mobility during industrialization (e.g., Miles 1993; Lambert, Prandy,
and Bottero 2007; Lippényi, Maas, and van Leeuwen 2013a;), but most did
not (e.g., Fukumoto and Grusky 1993; Maas and van Leeuwen 2002).3 The
latter findings, though, may arise from a lack of statistical power, given that
many historical studies are small and cover only a brief period. A number of
studies showed a slow increase in relative mobility within most industrialized societies (e.g., Ganzeboom et al. 1989; Breen and Luijkx 2004;), but
some did not, including the influential study by Erikson and Goldthorpe
(1992). As was the case with total mobility, there is more support for differences in relative mobility patterns between industrialized countries than for
trends within them (Ganzeboom et al. 1989; Wong 1992).
Very few mobility studies have compared countries over a long time period. Long and Ferrie (2013) have studied mobility patterns in the United
States and Britain around 1880 and 1975, and Bourdieu, Ferrie, and
Kesztenbaum (2009) compared the United States with France in the periods
around 1880, 1910, and 1975. In both studies historical data (linked censuses and marriage registers) for the early period are compared with survey
data for the second half of the 20th century. They concluded that around
1880 relative intergenerational mobility was higher in the United States
than in Britain and France. The gap with Britain narrowed over time,
mainly because relative mobility decreased in the United States, but that
with France did not show a consistent trend. A decrease in relative mobility
is an exceptional finding. Two studies reanalyzing Long and Ferrie’s data
show that the decrease is driven by the specific long-term development
of farmers’ intergenerational mobility that remains undiscovered in their
summary measure of mobility (Hout and Guest 2013; Xie and Killewald
2013). If farmers’ immobility is taken into account, a decrease in mobility
is no longer found. Again, the question remains regarding the origin of contemporary differences. Are they, as the industrialization hypothesis implies,
the remnant of larger differences from the preindustrial period, fading
away? Or have long-term changes been negligibly small and nonsystem3
The data used in this study overlap partly with those used in some of these previous
studies. For England the data collated by Miles (1993) are used, but now with occupational coding and a class scheme comparable to those of the other countries. Nevertheless,
we do not expect a different conclusion regarding the country-specific trend. The conclusions of Lippényi et al. (2013b) are based on the same Hungarian data, but for a longer
(more modern) period. The studies of Maas and van Leeuwen (2002), van Leeuwen et al.
(2016), and Bourdieu et al. (2009) are based (partly) on a small portion of the Swedish
and French data, respectively.
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American Journal of Sociology
TABLE 1
Predicted Effects of Industrialization on Total
and Relative Mobility
After the Onset of Industrialization
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Countries that were more industrialized showed higher rates of
total mobility than countries that were less industrialized
Total mobility increased
Country differences in total mobility decreased
Countries that were more industrialized showed higher rates of
relative mobility than countries that were less industrialized
Relative mobility increased
Country differences in relative mobility decreased
atic? Table 1 presents an overview of the hypotheses on the effects of industrialization.
DATA AND METHODS
Data
The historical data sets used in this article cover 1.2 million marriages
within seven European countries (Britain, Finland, France, Germany,
Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden) in the period 1800–1914 (table 2).
All data originate from vital registers that include records relating to
births, deaths, and marriages. For present purposes, the marriage records
are the most useful. Apart from other information, marriage registers contain the occupations of spouses and often those of their parents. For some
countries (e.g., Britain and Hungary) vital registration records compiled
by the church are used, for other countries marriage records compiled by
the state (e.g., France and the Netherlands). Sometimes the marriage records are complemented by occupational information from death records,
birth records, and population registers (e.g., Finish, Swedish, and some German data sets). In Finland, and in some German data sets, marriage records
are linked across generations in order to create genealogies, or so-called clan
registers. Whenever possible, only the first marriages of the bridegroom
have been selected. In the case of Britain and of the Dutch Genlias data
set, it was not possible to exclude higher-order marriages.
Some data sets are comparable to surveys in the sense that they start from
a (random, sometimes stratified) sample of the population. Examples include one of the Dutch data sets (the Historical Sample of the Netherlands),
which starts with a random sample of Dutch birth registers, the Hungarian
and British data sets, for which random samples of marriages are drawn
from a stratified sample of cities and villages, and the French data set,
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Type of Data
Coverage
N Originala/
N Analyses
Population registers Stratified sample of regions,
complete population within
regions
b
First marriages during the period included in the study.
Because not only ancestors are included but also all the descendants of these ancestors, the final sample is fairly representative of the Finnish population
for this period.
a
Sweden . . . . . . . 1800–99
Germany . . . . . . 1800–1914 Mixed
See app. table A2
Hungary . . . . . . 1865–1914 Marriages (church) Stratified sample, present
Hungary
Netherlands . . . 1810–1914 Marriages (civil)
See app. table A2
Miles (1999)
Häkkinen (2006)
Reference
Dupâquier (2004); Leroy,
Nicolas, and Pélissier (1998)
First marriages 25,721/14,412
See appendix
First marriages 36,939/31,060
Lippényi, Maas, and van
Leeuwen (2013a)
Differs between 1,051,608/517,420 See appendix
data sets
First marriages 67,908/23,384
CEDAR 2015
Britain . . . . . . . . 1835–1914 Marriages (church) Stratified sample, England
All marriages
10,663/9,836
Finland . . . . . . . 1800–1914 Genealogies
Ancestors of 10 poor families in First marriages 6,185/4,257
1930 and all their descendantsb
France . . . . . . . . 1800–1914 Marriages (civil)
Name sample, France
First marriages 44,913/24,452
Period
TABLE 2
Characteristics of the Data Sets
American Journal of Sociology
which consists of all vital registers of persons whose surname starts with
the letters “Tra” (these letters were chosen because surnames starting with
these three letters occur in all languages spoken in France and are equally
distributed over social classes). Other data sets cover in principle all marriages that took place in a certain region. In the case of one of the Dutch
data sets (Genlias), this region covers almost half of the country, resulting
in over a million cases. Other regional data sets, from Germany and Sweden, are smaller. With the exception of Germany, the coverage of all data
sets is so large that they can, more or less, be considered to represent the
country as a whole. For Germany, no such data set exists. To be able to include Germany in the analyses, we use six smaller German studies (app.
table A1).
Not all data sets cover the whole period from 1800 to 1914. This is sometimes the result of the sources themselves—in most cases civil marriage
registration did not commence until around 1812, and Hungarian data
contained very little occupational information before 1865. Sometimes this
lack of completeness was a deliberate decision on the part of the data collectors, or it was driven by privacy regulations. For example, the Swedish
data cover exactly the 19th century, and the data on Berlin are from just
certain years between 1825 and 1909. Although a few data sets continue
after 1914, we decided not to include those years because of the possible
major influence of the First World War in some of the countries being
studied.
Whereas the main problem of survey research is selective nonresponse,
the main problem of the historical data sources used in this study is selective
missing information on the occupation of the father. The number of cases
that can be used in the analyses is only about half of the original number
of cases. This difference is caused mainly by the fact that the marriage certificate did not contain information on the father’s occupation, usually because the father was not present at the marriage of the son, most often because he was no longer alive or sometimes because the son had migrated
over a large distance. It is often assumed that sons who migrated or whose
father died when they were still young might have been less affected by the
class of their father, causing us to underestimate mobility. Previous studies
using the French and the Dutch data sets, however, report very little selective dropout (Zijdeman 2009; Maas et al. 2011). In table 3 we compare, for
all the countries, the class distribution of sons before and after deleting cases
without information on the occupational class of their father. If unskilled
workers were more likely than other classes to migrate over long distances,
we should see, after deleting cases without information on father’s class, a
smaller percentage of sons from this class in table 3. Higher mortality of fathers from the unskilled working class would have the same result, under
the assumption that there is an association between father’s and son’s
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11.0
25.4
4.3
55.7
3.6
7.8
10.9
25.4
4.5
55.5
3.7
A
7.5
5.9
48.9
3.5
34.2
B
31.2
6.9
4.9
52.1
2.7
33.3
A
Finland
13.2
19.4
34.4
26.5
6.6
B
45.6
A
12.6
19.8
35.8
25.4
6.3
France
13.1
22.8
20.0
38.4
5.7
B
44.0
12.3
23.8
17.9
40.9
5.2
A
Germany
12.5
18.1
39.8
14.5
15.1
B
16.0
11.0
17.9
41.0
14.5
15.5
A
Hungary
13.3
16.3
19.2
37.6
13.6
B
50.8
12.5
17.0
18.6
37.8
14.1
A
Netherlands
NOTE.—Germany and the Netherlands: results pertain to all data sets combined. For all countries, B 5 before; A 5 after.
Nonmanual . . . . . . . . .
Skilled workers . . . . . .
Farmers. . . . . . . . . . . .
Unskilled workers. . . .
Farm workers . . . . . . .
% missing . . . . . . . . . .
B
Britain
TABLE 3
Class Distribution of Sons before and after Deleting Cases without
Information on Occupational Class of Father
8.3
7.7
21.0
20.5
42.4
B
65.6
4.7
4.9
31.8
13.6
45.0
A
Sweden
American Journal of Sociology
classes even after the death of the father (an assumption that is supported in
empirical research; see van Poppel, de Jong, and Liefbroer 1998). Our
results confirm the conclusions about the lack of selective dropout in the
French and Dutch data sets, and this appears also to be the case for the British, German, Hungarian, and Finnish data.4 Only the data set from Sweden
shows an overrepresentation of sons who are farmers—and thus unlikely to
be migrants. This is a consequence of the regional character of the Swedish
data in combination with the fact that the occupational information comes
from the population registers. A father’s occupation is not given on his son’s
marriage certificate, but if the father lived in the same region, his occupation
can be found in the population register. If the son had migrated from the
region where his family of origin lived, his father’s information would be
lacking. This means that Sweden was probably somewhat less agrarian
and more mobile than what is reflected in the data.
We further investigate the absence of father’s occupation from son’s marriage certificate with data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands
(HSN; Release Life Courses 2010.01), an exceptional data set that includes
both marriage acts and population data of the same persons. These data
cover the period after the onset of industrialization (1888–1939). Men for
whom father’s occupation was missing on the marriage certificate but could
be retrieved from the population register were more often intergenerationally mobile than men for whom father’s occupation was recorded on
the marriage certificate.5 Absolute mobility was, respectively, 48.9% versus
4
Note that in all countries the percentage of sons in the highest class is smaller after deleting cases without information on occupational class of the father. This may indicate
that sons from this class more often migrated over a long distance. It speaks against
the idea that sons of deceased fathers would be more often downwardly mobile.
5
We started with analyzing all marriage certificates from the HSN marriage cohorts
1888–1939 that have information on bridegroom’s occupation (N 5 8,521). Father’s occupation is missing in 43.1% of these cases (valid N 5 4,852). We compared the results
based on these data with those for all cases in which we have information on father’s occupation from either the marriage certificate or the population registers (father’s occupation now missing in only 14.1% of all cases; valid N 5 7,319). Sons from fathers for whom
no information was available on the marriage act, but for whom we did find information
in the population registers, were more often intergenerationally mobile than sons from
fathers with information on the marriage act (48.9% vs. 39.6%). Relative mobility was
also higher (uniform difference parameter 0.73). In a second step we compared sons of
fathers with information on the marriage act (the type of population that we analyze
in our study) and the “total population”—in this case sons of fathers with information
from marriage acts or population registers, distinguishing between early marriage cohorts (1888–1908) and late marriage cohorts (1909–39). In the total population the increase in total and relative mobility is somewhat smaller than in the marriage certificate
population (total mobility: 5.1% vs. 7.2% increase; relative mobility: uniform difference
parameter 0.91 vs. 0.88). However, the change is in the same direction and highly significant in either sample. Thus, although sons whose father very likely died before the son
married were more mobile than sons whose father survived, the main conclusion on
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
39.6%, and relative mobility was significantly higher as well. This is in line
with the results of van Poppel et al. (1998). Thus, sons of fathers who had
died relatively young and sons who had migrated over a large distance were
indeed more mobile than other sons. As a consequence, observed mobility
from marriage records only is lower than that of the “total population” (as
captured via marriage and population data combined), at least in this Dutch
case. However, the trend remains the same: when we compare early marriage cohorts (1888–1908) with late marriage cohorts (1909–39) mobility is
always higher in the latter cohorts, whether we look at marriage acts or
at the total population. Although this is a reassuring finding, it remains
the case that mobility in the two populations was different. Since data as
rich as those collected in the HSN are very rare, we cannot investigate
whether similar differences existed in the other countries. If greater mobility
among men with marriage certificates on which the occupation of the father
is not recorded was generally the case, one would expect to find a negative
relationship between the percentage of cases without information on father’s occupation and the amount of mobility. As a robustness check we will
therefore investigate whether our conclusions hold true or not, when we take
the percentage of missing cases into account.
A specific problem associated with marriage data is, of course, that these
cover only the population marrying. Nowadays, marriage data are therefore far from representative for the population. However, in the period covered by this study the percentage of men still unmarried at age 45–49 ranged
between 13 and 11 in France, 12 and 10 in Britain, 11 and 13 in the Netherlands, and 7 and 10 in Sweden (Hajnal 1953); the percentage was even
lower in Hungary (Hajnal 1965). Changes over time were small, and remaining single was in general not more or less likely after the onset of industrialization than before. It could, however, be argued that downwardly
mobile men were not only less successful on the labor market but on the
marriage market as well and thus more likely to stay single. And if this relationship between marital status and mobility changed over time, our results might be biased. This issue can also be investigated using the HSN
data (2010), which include both married and single men. Married men
were indeed more likely to be upwardly mobile than single men (20.3%
vs. 13.6%). The difference increased over time (from 3.2% for men who
married between 1888 and 1908 to 8.5% for those who married between
1909 and 1939). However, due to the fact that singles were a minority
and the differences in mobility are relatively small, an analysis of the total
(married and single) male population leads to very similar results and to the
same substantive conclusions as an analysis of married men only. Total
trends in mobility remained the same, irrespective whether we analyzed the marriage certificates or the total population.
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mobility numbers never differed more than 1% between the total and married populations, and the difference in the relative mobility parameters was
negligible.6 Since in the other countries we studied singlehood is not more
common than in the Netherlands and there are no obvious reasons to expect
larger differences in mobility between singles and married men, we are
confident that population-wide trends will closely follow trends among
married men.
In some respects, marriage data are more suitable than survey data for
studying trends in mobility. In the intergenerational mobility tables based
on the occupations at marriage, the class position of sons at their own marriage is compared with that of their father at the marriage of their son. The
son’s occupation is thus measured at more or less comparable ages (around
age 27).7 It is likely that men would have married after they had attained a
more or less stable occupation that allowed family formation. In survey
data the occupation of the sons is usually measured at very different ages
and thus different stages in the occupational career. Of course, it is possible
to restrict survey analyses to sons in a certain age range, but this is not often
done, maybe because it involves a considerable decrease in the number of
cases (e.g., Ganzeboom et al. [1989] analyzed men ages 21–64 and Breen
and Luijkx [2004] men ages 25–64). Furthermore, marriage data are better
than survey data at allowing one to pinpoint intergenerational mobility in
historical time. Whereas first occupations might take the form of small, temporary jobs, relatively unrelated to a father’s occupation, an occupation
that allowed family formation is likely to have been both strongly dependent on parental resources and a very strong determinant of a son’s further
We compared all married men (N 5 8,653) with all men who remained single and who
are observed at least until age 40 (N 5 888). In a first step we investigated whether singles
are from lower-status background than married men. That appeared not to be the case.
The only significant difference is found for sons of farmers who were more likely to remain single (14.8%) than sons from other classes (between 7.7% and 10.4%). In a second
step we compared absolute mobility of single and married men. Among married men
17.4% were downwardly mobile, and among single men, 16.7%, which is not significantly different. But married men were more likely to be upwardly mobile than single
men (20.3% vs. 13.6%), and this difference increased over time (from 3.2% for the marriage cohort 1888–1908 to 8.5% for the marriage cohort 1909–39). In a third step we investigated the effect of this changing difference in mobility between married and single
men on total and relative mobility by comparing mobility tables based on married men
only and based on the total male population. The total mobility for the first cohort was
34.7% (married men) and 34.1% (total population) and for the second cohort 39.1% and
38.1%. The uniform difference parameter for the second cohort compared to the first
was 0.86 for married men and 0.87 for the total population. We conclude that the effect
of excluding single men on the mobility parameters is negligible and excluding single
men does not lead to different conclusions.
7
Mean age at marriage differed little between countries, ranging from 26.9 (Britain) to
28.1 (Finland). It changed only slightly over time. Differences over time in mean age
within one country never exceeded four years.
6
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
occupational career (Blossfeld 1987; Schulz 2013). At marriage, or just before marriage, important processes causing intergenerational mobility, or a
lack of it, thus took place. Since the year of marriage is known, these family
processes can be linked to what occurred in society at large at that time.
Researchers analyzing survey data may use birth cohorts to approach the
important early stage of the occupational career (e.g., Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992), but they would usually lack a measurement of occupation
at that time. Or they might assume that historical processes were at work
at the time the son’s occupation was measured, though that could be at very
different stages in these sons’ occupational careers (e.g., Ganzeboom et al.
1989; Breen and Luijkx 2004). A last attractive characteristic of marriage
data is that in principle these are available for each year, allowing precise
modeling of change over time.
Measures
All occupational information relating to fathers and sons has been coded
uniformly using the Historical International Standard Classification of
Occupations (HISCO), an occupational classification system that is both
international and historical (van Leeuwen et al. 2002, 2004). Standard routines are available to transform HISCO codes into the historical class
scheme HISCLASS (van Leeuwen and Maas 2011). HISCLASS distinguishes 12 classes: (1) higher managers, (2) higher professionals, (3) lower
managers, (4) lower professionals and clerical and sales personnel, (5) lower
clerical and sales personnel, (6) foremen, (7) medium skilled workers, (8) farmers and fishermen, (9) lower-skilled workers, (10) lower-skilled farm workers, (11) unskilled workers, and (12) unskilled farm workers. Because some
classes are only sparsely populated, we combine classes 1 to 5 into a nonmanual class, classes 6 and 7 into skilled workers, classes 9 and 11 into unskilled
workers, and classes 10 and 12 into farm workers, leaving a total of five
classes. Using HISCO and HISCLASS it was possible to classify sons and
fathers comparably across time and space.
We analyze intergenerational mobility in our seven countries against the
background of industrialization. In order to describe industrialization processes in the countries included in this study we use two indicators: the percentage of sons in the agricultural classes (combining farmers and farm
workers) and the percentage of sons in industrial occupations. Industrial occupations include all HISCO categories that involve working with a machine or electrical device. These occupations range from telegraphers and
bus conductors to machinery mechanics and crane drivers. We were conservative in assigning an occupation to the industrial sector; occupations
that can also be performed by hand are not included. For example, in the
broader HISCO group of weavers and related workers the following occu853
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American Journal of Sociology
pations are considered industrial: beam warper, loom threader (machine),
cloth weaver (machine, except Jacquard loom), lace weaver (machine), carpet weaver (machine), and net maker (machine). Other weavers such as
weaver, specialization unknown and cloth weaver (hand) are considered
nonindustrial because it is either unclear whether a machine is involved,
or it is explicitly stated that this is not the case. Nonindustrial occupations
that grew in size as a consequence of industrialization, for example, those of
secretaries and bank employees, are not counted as industrial either. It is
likely that a considerable proportion of those who worked in the industrial
sector have not been captured by our conservative definition. This is because bridegrooms whose occupational titles leave it uncertain that they
use a machine end up in unspecified HISCO categories (e.g., weaver, specialization unknown).
Methods
In order to calculate total mobility percentages and relative mobility parameters, mobility tables were created for each five-year period, starting
with 1800–1804 and ending with 1910–14. If the number of cases in a table
was fewer than 300, the table for this period was combined with that of an
adjacent period. In total 16 tables are analyzed for Britain, 10 for Finland,
22 for France, 36 for Germany (from six data sets), 10 for Hungary, 36 for
the Netherlands (from two data sets), and 19 for Sweden. The total degree of
mobility is measured as the percentage of sons in a class that is different
from their father’s class. In order to investigate whether total mobility increased more after the onset of industrialization than before, logistic regression models are estimated including separate time trends (splines) for years
before and after the onset of industrialization.
A log-linear model is estimated to compare relative mobility between
countries and periods, because it excludes effects of the marginal distributions of the mobility tables, for example, caused by changes in the occupational distribution. What is left is called relative mobility: the relative
chances of sons from two different classes of origin ending up in one specific
class and not another (comparable to odds ratios). We estimate a uniform
difference model, which is especially suited to investigating differences in
relative mobility between mobility tables. It does not restrict the pattern
of mobility within a table but summarizes the difference in relative mobility between tables in one multiplicative—uniform difference—parameter
(Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992; Xie 1992). We also estimate models with
two multiplicative parameters per table: one for the overall pattern of
relative mobility and one for additional immobility on the diagonal. With
these models we explore whether differences between countries and periods
mainly exist with respect to immobility or with respect to the class in which
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
men end up if they leave their class of origin (i.e., when they are intergenerationally mobile). The models are estimated using lEM (Vermunt 1997). The
fit of the models is compared using a v2 test and the Baysian information
criterion (BIC).
In a second step we will test our hypotheses on country differences and
trends in relative mobility by analyzing the uniform difference parameters
with a linear regression model, again including splines. We decided not
to weight the mobility parameters by a measure of their reliability, because that would cause the results to be driven mainly by the very large
Dutch data set. Instead, we analyze unweighted parameters. We compare
country-specific analyses with the overall analyses in order to draw conclusions on the generalizability of our results.
Hypotheses on the convergence of the countries with respect to intergenerational mobility are tested using coefficients of variation. We calculate
coefficients for different combinations of countries for several reasons.
Not all countries cover the whole period, thus the size of one overall coefficient would be driven by countries entering and leaving the set of observations. Therefore, we select groups of countries with similar observation periods. Further, we investigate whether results are stable if we include
Germany—the country with the least representative data.
The data sets differ from each other in some respects. In the Swedish data
set the lack of occupational information for a considerable number of fathers led to an overrepresentation of farming bridegrooms. The British data
and the Dutch Genlias data set include not only first but also second and
higher-order marriages. We perform a number of robustness checks to investigate whether differences between data sets affect our results. We compare results of analyses with and without higher-order marriages. For Sweden we compare analyses with and without weighting to correct for the
overrepresentation of farmers. And for the Netherlands we compare the results based on the Genlias data set with those based on the HSN data set.
Finally, we investigate whether our results with respect to relative mobility
still hold when the specific immobility of farmers is taken into account by
adding a specific parameter for this cell in the mobility table that can vary
freely over time and country (compare Hout and Guest 2013; Xie and
Killewald 2013).
RESULTS
Industrialization
Britain was the first country to industrialize, as early as the 18th century,
and this is clearly visible in figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 illustrates that the proportion of bridegrooms working in agriculture in England was around 0.10
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FIG. 1.—Indicators of industrialization in seven European countries, 1800–1914: proportion in agriculture. The Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data and the German
analyses to the Six Villages data.
over the whole period observed, a much lower proportion than in the other
countries. Figure 2 illustrates that the proportion of bridegrooms in industrial occupations started to increase earlier in Britain (around 1850) than in
the other countries.
Germany, France, and the Netherlands formed a middle group with respect to industrialization. At the beginning of the 19th century, 40%–50% of
bridegrooms worked in agriculture, and this percentage decreased only
slowly. The proportion of bridegrooms working in industrial occupations
started to grow 20 years later in the Netherlands, Germany, and France
(around 1870) than in Britain. As one might expect, German regions and
cities differed strongly with respect to industrialization. In none of the regions, though, did the percentage of bridegrooms working in agriculture
FIG. 2.—Indicators of industrialization in seven European countries, 1800–1914: proportion in industrial occupations. The Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data and
the German analyses to the Six Villages data. The proportions are conservative estimates.
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
change much over time. In the cities of Berlin, Bielefeld, and Borghorst the
proportion of bridegrooms working in industrial occupations started to increase earlier than in the Six Villages data set. The two Dutch data sets
show very similar developments in terms of the proportion of bridegrooms
working in agriculture or in industrial occupations. The Genlias data cover
six provinces in the east of the Netherlands. The largest cities in the Netherlands are in the west of the country, which is reflected in a somewhat
higher percentage of bridegrooms in agricultural occupations in the Genlias
data set compared with those in the nationwide HSN sample.8
Sweden, Finland, and Hungary industrialized late, with very high proportions of men working in the agricultural sector throughout the 19th century.9 But especially in Sweden, the proportion working in agriculture decreased. The proportion of bridegrooms in industrial occupations began
to grow around 1890.
To what extent are the indicators of industrialization from our own data
consistent with what we know from the literature about industrialization in
Europe? An indicator of industrialization often used is innate energy, that
is, not from human labor or the use of animals (Davis 1955). In its operationalization this concept is often captured by looking at steam, the earliest main source of modern energy (disregarding energy from wind and
watermills). From surveys of the economic history of Europe (e.g., Persson
2010; Broadberry and O’Rourke 2010a, 2010b; Berend 2013) it is clear that
steam engines were first used in Britain, then spread to Belgium, France,
and Germany, and later to much of the rest of Europe, much later in fact
in areas further away from the epicenter such as Russia and present-day
Hungary (which, with Austria, formed the Habsburg Empire). Comparative measures of the use of steam are rare, however. A minor exception is
formed by data assembled and published by the French National Bureau
of Statistics (Statistique Générale de la France 1926) for four countries (Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden) in the years 1905–7 (see table 4). Even
at this late date, the trifold division into core (Britain), semiperiphery (here
covered by France and Germany), and periphery (here Sweden) suggested
by the literature is evident. It should be noted here that historical descriptions of industrialization suggest that France industrialized earlier than
Germany, which caught up, however, from the late 19th century. If a similar table could be presented for an earlier period, the gap between France
and Germany would be smaller, and, going back to the early 19th century,
the position of the two countries would be reversed.
8
Figures for the separate German and Dutch data sets are available upon request.
The indicators of industrialization have been calculated with respect to all bridegrooms,
irrespective of whether their father’s class was known. The Swedish figure thus suffers
less from selectivity due to missing values.
9
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TABLE 4
Indicators of Industrialization in European Countries, 1800–1913
COUNTRY
Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . .
France . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Germany . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hungary (1Austria) . . .
Netherlands . . . . . . . . .
Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . .
HORSEPOWER
1906a
9,765
2,605
6,715
232
PER CAPITA LEVELS OF INDUSTRIALIZATIONb
1800
1830
1860
1880
1900
1913
16
8
9
8
7
9
8
25
8
12
9
7
9
9
64
11
20
15
11
11
15
87
15
28
25
15
14
24
100
18
39
52
23
22
41
115
21
59
85
32
28
87
a
The horsepower of steam engines multiplied by 1,000, with data taken from Statistique
Générale de la France 1926:310–11.
b
For per capita levels of industrialization, the years are 1800–1913 for the countries in the
sample (UK 1900 5 100); Bairoch (1982), pp. 281, 294, and 330.
A second often-used indicator (Bairoch 1982) refers to the size of the secondary sector (industry) in the labor force (consisting, in addition, of those
working in the primary sector—agriculture—and the tertiary sector—services). In this sense industry is much broader than the concept of mechanized industrial jobs that we would ideally like to capture. Artisans such
as coopers, blacksmiths, or tanners using age-old technology also worked
in the secondary sector.10 These data do not contradict the notion of a
starter (Britain), followed first by France and Germany, and later by Finland, and Hungary (table 4). For the Netherlands, the published figures—
indicating late industrialization—deviate from our own analyses, in which
this country takes a middle position. We assume this can be explained by
the fact that the Netherlands already had a large service sector in the
19th century (Grafe, Neal, and Unger 2010, p. 212). As a consequence the
relative size of the total secondary sector was small. Within that sector,
though, increasingly traditional ways of production were replaced by industrial methods. Sweden also has a large secondary sector, but based on
its very low score on horsepower in 1906 and the lack of a sharp increase
in the share of bridegrooms in industrial occupations until the end of the
19th century, we assume that a large share of this secondary sector consisted
of artisans.
10
Furthermore, these comparative data go back to estimates by Bairoch (1982), the derivation of which is not entirely transparent, and with the exception of data for Britain in
1800 (Broadberry, Fremdling, and Solar 2010, p. 172; based on Crafts and Harley 1992),
they have not been revised. It is believed, however, that these data “fit well with the large
secondary literature on the subject, and can at least be seen as providing a broad guide to
the orders of magnitude” (Broadberry et al. 2010, p. 171).
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An as yet unaddressed issue is how to dichotomize the era we are studying
into a less and a more industrialized period. For the sake of simplicity we
will refer to these periods as “preindustrial” and “industrial,” although
“pre- and early” versus “mature” industrialization would be more sophisticated labels. We will consider 1850, 1870, and 1890 as the turning points,
that is, for Britain (1850), for France, Germany, and the Netherlands
(1870), and for Finland, Hungary, and Sweden (1890), because of the sharp
increase in the proportion of industrial occupations among young men in
these countries around those years. This periodization is made for the sake
of the analyses. In fact it dichotomizes a continuous process of the spread of
steam engines from Britain to the rest of Europe.
Total Mobility
As discussed above, total mobility is expected to have changed during industrialization through two processes. First, changes in the occupational
distribution “forced” men to leave the class of their father. Second, managers in industrial societies recruited more on the basis of achievement instead
of ascription, thereby decreasing the possibilities of fathers to transfer their
class position to their son. Mobility resulting from the first process is often
called structural mobility and that resulting from the second process, relative mobility. Figures 1 and 2 illustrated that the expected changes in the
class distribution took place in all countries in our study sometime between
1800 and 1914. A simple measure summarizing all differences in the class
distribution of fathers and sons is the index of dissimilarity.11 We calculated
this measure for all mobility tables. It correlates .45 with the amount of total
mobility, indicating that total mobility is indeed partly, but definitely not
completely, driven by changes in the class distribution. In the following
we analyze whether total mobility was higher in countries that industrialized earlier and whether it increased with industrialization.
Figure 3 shows that the likelihood of intergenerational mobility differed
considerably between countries. Whereas in Hungary and Finland at the
time of their marriage between 20% and 30% of sons were in a class different from that of their fathers, in Germany this figure was between 40% and
50%. In Britain, the country that industrialized earliest, total mobility was
no higher than in countries that industrialized later (France, e.g.) or much
11
The index of dissimilarity is defined as
1 N bi wi 2 o
2 i51 B W
in which bi is the number of fathers in class i, B is the total number of fathers, wi is the
number of sons in class i, and W is the total number of sons.
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FIG. 3.—Total mobility (proportions) in seven European countries, 1800–1914. The
line for Germany is predicted using model 2 in table 5.
later (Sweden, e.g.). Germany and Sweden show the highest degree of mobility. Our first hypothesis, namely, that more industrialized countries can
be expected to have greater overall mobility than less industrialized countries, is thus not supported by the historical data.
A closer look at the country-specific changes over the whole period shows
that in the majority of our countries intergenerational mobility increased
over time (figure 3 and table 5, model 1). In Britain, with every 10 years
the natural logarithm of the odds of being intergenerationally mobile increased by 0.09, which means the odds increased 9% every 10 years (e.09).
France, Hungary, and Finland show an increase as well. The increase
was smallest in Finland (3% every 10 years). No overall trend toward
greater total mobility is observed in the Netherlands (a 2% decrease every
10 years), Sweden (a 1% decrease every 10 years), and Germany (no
change).
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
TABLE 5
Changes in Total Mobility over Time
Britain Finland France Germany Hungary Netherlands Sweden
Model 1:
Constant . . . . . . 2.97** 21.03** 2.04**
Time . . . . . . . . .
.09**
.03*
.04**
Model v2 (df ). . . 87.83 (1) 5.92 (1) 85.99 (1)
Model 2:a
Constant . . . . . . 2.87** 2.98** 2.79**
Preindustrial
time . . . . . . . . 2.04
.02
.06**
Industrial
time . . . . . . . .
.09**
.17
.02
Model v2 (df ). . . 89.22 (2) 8.42 (2) 91.08 (2)
N............
9,836
4,257
24,452
2.12
.00
254.77 (6)
21.29**
.08**
56.84 (1)
2.41**
2.02**
531.60 (1)
2.33**
2.01*
5.80 (1)
2.04
2.93**
2.25**
2.28**
2.03*
2.15**
2.08**
2.03**
.06**
.23**
.03**
.47**
267.25 (7) 1,552.31 (2) 1,231.06 (2) 30.89 (2)
14,412
31,060
509,344
23,384
NOTE.—Coefficients (b) of logistic regression of intergenerational mobility on time, using
splines. The Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data set; for the German analyses all data
sets are combined and the model is estimated with a dummy variable for each data set (Six Villages data set being the reference category).
a
Model 2 contains splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period. All time effects are in decades (years/10). The industrial period is assumed to have
started in 1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands), or 1890 (Finland, Hungary,
Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
According to the industrialization hypotheses, however, total mobility is
expected to increase especially after industrialization. We therefore estimate
a second set of models to investigate whether total mobility increased at a
faster pace after industrialization than before, as theory predicts. In five
of the seven countries, Britain, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and
Sweden, this was indeed the case (table 5, model 2). In Britain the overall
increase in total mobility over time—which is visible in model 1—can be decomposed into a nonsignificant change during the preindustrial period and
a significant increase of 10% every decade after the onset of industrialization (table 5, model 2). In Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden
the likelihood of being intergenerationally mobile actually decreased in the
preindustrial period, but it certainly increased thereafter (the odds rising
6%, 26%, 3%, and 60%, respectively, per decade). Finland and France both
deviated from the general pattern of a clear increase in total mobility after
industrialization. France showed rising mobility in the preindustrial period
but not in the industrial period. In Finland changes in total mobility were
not significant.
We performed a number of robustness checks in order to investigate
whether the results reflect a particular data set (Germany and the Nether861
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American Journal of Sociology
lands), the inclusion of higher-order marriages (Finland, France, and Hungary), or the selective dropout of migrants (Sweden). For Germany the degree of mobility differs between data sets (app. fig. A1). Mobility was higher
in Berlin and the Six Villages data set than in Ost-Friesland and the Hamburg and Villages data set. This was to be expected because the data sets
are relatively small and differ greatly with respect to urbanization. It is reassuring that all the German data sets, as far as observed, show relatively
high total mobility in the later decades of the 19th century. But it is unclear
whether Ost-Friesland, which showed total mobility decreasing until 1870,
would have later “joined” the other regions. The lack of an overall trend in
total mobility in Germany—despite the separate figures suggesting otherwise—indicates that the inclusion and exclusion of data sets affects the results and that they are probably less reliable than those for the other countries. The two large data sets from the Netherlands show very similar
degrees of and trends in total mobility, indicating that either of them can
be used to describe the whole country. Whether or not higher-order marriages are included in Finland, France, Germany, or Hungary does not matter for the results (app. table A2). This gives confidence in the results for
Britain and for the Dutch Genlias data, in which higher-order marriages
cannot be distinguished from first marriages. Finally, for Sweden we compare weighted and nonweighted data. The weighted data represent the
class distribution of sons before cases without information on the father’s
class were deleted. The weighted data contain fewer farmers and consequently show more intergenerational mobility. However, the overall shape
of the two Swedish lines in figure A1 is rather similar. The logistic regression
models estimated on the weighted data show that the decrease in the preindustrial period is not significant, but the increase after the onset of industrialization is.
Whether the results are affected by country differences and changes over
time in the percentage of cases without information on father’s class is analyzed by adding this percentage as a variable to the models (app. table A3).
The effect of the control variable is not significant in Britain, France, and
Sweden, is negative in Finland and the Netherlands, and is positive in Germany and Hungary, possibly reflecting differences in the causes of information being missing between countries. In general, however, the conclusions
are not affected by including the control variable. There is one exception.
Whereas Finland did not show an increase in absolute mobility over time
in the industrial period in our main analyses, it does if we take the percentage of cases with missing information on father’s occupation into account.
This strengthens the conclusion that social mobility increases faster after
industrialization than before. The sign and significance of all other effects
do not change, with the exception of the trend in Germany in the preindustrial period. This trend was negative in our main analyses but is not signif862
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
icant in the analyses with the control variable, which is still in accordance
with our conclusion. One would be justified in concluding that our second
hypothesis—that total mobility rose during industrialization—is supported
in most countries.
According to our third hypothesis, country differences in total mobility
decreased during industrialization. Coefficients of variation are calculated
to test this hypothesis. The results are presented in figure 4. Since countries
cover different periods, we present results for different combinations of
countries. Whatever combination we use, however, the hypothesis is never
supported. The countries converged with respect to their total mobility between 1800 and 1870, a period that, for all countries except Britain, has been
considered preindustrial. After 1870 the countries start to diverge again.
How much depends on the subset of countries. The variation in the preindustrial period is smaller and total mobility converged less in this period
if we exclude Finland. Similarly, part of the divergence during industrialization is the result of Hungary entering the data set. The drop in variation
in the last decade is caused by the large increase in total mobility in Hungary during this period, causing Hungary to increasingly resemble other
countries. This detail in the graph suggests that the divergence observed
after the onset of industrialization might have been temporary (fig. 4).
The overall conclusion, however, is that industrialization definitely did not
FIG. 4.—Convergence and divergence of total mobility in seven European countries,
1800–1914 (coefficients of variation).
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American Journal of Sociology
cause an immediate convergence in total mobility and that there is actually more support for country differences having increased.
Relative Mobility
Changes in class structure, as reflected in the marginal distributions of the
mobility tables, were important forces behind changes in total mobility. We
have used log-linear models to analyze relative mobility, that is, the mobility that remains after taking into account the effects of the marginal distributions of the mobility tables. We first estimated a uniform difference model
that allows the strength of the association to be different between all mobility tables. This model fits the data significantly better than a model that requires the association to be the same in all tables (D v2 5 6,015, D df 5 128 /
BIC 218,938 vs. 216,550).12
Figure 5 shows the parameter estimates of the uniform differences in association between the tables. Britain in the first observation period (1835–39)
is the reference point (fixed at 1). All other values are estimated multiplicative parameters that indicate how much stronger or weaker the association in a mobility table is compared with Britain 1835–39. We investigate
whether country differences and changes over time are significant by analyzing the uniform difference parameters in a linear regression analysis.
Figure 5 and table 6 show both significant country differences and historical changes. Germany, Sweden, and Finland were relatively open countries
in which the association between father’s and son’s class was, on average,
0.39, 0.31, and 0.22 lower, respectively, than in Britain (model 2).13 France is
more similar to Britain, but still somewhat more open (0.09 lower). The
Netherlands and Hungary were relatively closed societies, with an association 0.07 and 0.09 higher, respectively, than in Britain. Thus country differences in relative mobility generally do not reflect country differences in
the level of industrialization during the 19th century.
12
We do not want this overall test to be affected by differences between the German data
sets. Therefore the model includes five parameters for the differences between the six
German data sets. The association is thus allowed to differ between German data sets,
but not between periods within the same data set or between Germany and the other
countries.
13
The difference of 0.35 between Germany and Britain means that the natural logarithms of the odds ratios in the mobility table for Germany are on average 35% smaller
than those in the mobility table for Britain. As such it is quite an abstract number since it
does not show the actual strength of the odds ratios or the pattern of odds ratios within the
tables, let alone the spread of cases over the cells of the mobility table. However, it is a
convenient and widely accepted way of summarizing the difference in the relative
chances of sons from different classes of origin to reach different classes of destination
(i.e., relative mobility).
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
FIG. 5.—Relative mobility (uniform difference in association) in seven European countries, 1800–1914. The line for Germany is predicted using model 2 in table 7. Britain
(1835–39) is the reference point (fixed at 1).
As a first robustness check, we investigate whether this conclusion is affected by country differences in the percentage of cases with missing information on father’s class (app. table A4, model 2a). Country differences only
slightly change in these analyses. Germany, Sweden, and Finland were still
the most open societies, although Sweden moves closer toward Britain.
France was still similar to Britain, and Hungary and the Netherlands were
the most closed societies. Second, we analyze whether the trends and country differences are driven by farmers’ immobility (app. table A4, model 2b).
Country differences in relative mobility indeed seem partly driven by farmers’ immobility. If we filter out farmers’ immobility, Hungary and the Netherlands were no longer especially closed societies. They become part of a
group of countries with similar amounts of relative mobility, to which also
Britain and France belonged. Finland and Germany were still relatively
open societies, but the differences with Britain are smaller when farmers’
immobility is excluded than when it is included. Sweden is the exception
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TABLE 6
Changes in Relative Mobility over
Time and in All Countries
Constant . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . . . . . .
Industrial time . . . . . . . . .
Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . .
Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adjusted R2 . . . . . . . . . . . .
Model 1
Model 2
.99*
2.00
1.03**
.01*
2.03**
2.19**
2.06*
2.35**
.15*
.10**
2.28**
.79
2.22**
2.09**
2.39**
.09**
.07*
2.31**
.82
NOTE.—Unstandardized coefficients of regression analysis of
uniform difference parameters on country and time, using splines.
The Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data set; for the German
analyses all data sets are combined and the model is estimated with
a dummy variable for each data set (Six Villages data being the reference category). N 5 134.
a
Model 2 contains splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period. All time effects are in decades
(years/10). The industrial period is assumed to have started in 1850
(Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands), or 1890 (Finland,
Hungary, Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
to the general pattern. Without farmers’ immobility, the openness of Sweden is even more exceptional than with farmers included. We conclude that
our fourth hypothesis, on country differences, is not supported. The late industrializing countries Sweden and Finland were more open than expected,
and Britain, the most industrialized country, did not show especially high
levels of relative mobility.
From country differences we now turn to changes in relative mobility
over time. There was no overall trend toward more openness during the
whole period observed. However, if we consider trends in the preindustrial
and the industrial periods separately, we observe in table 6 a significant
decrease of 0.03 per decade in the association between father’s and son’s
class during industrialization. Our fifth hypothesis is supported. Before
the onset of industrialization, relative mobility slowly decreased. In other
words, society became more closed. As appendix table A4 shows, the latter
finding may be the result of changes in the percentage of cases with missing
information on father’s class (model 2a) or may be driven by farmers’ immobility (model 2b). If we take either of these two variables into account
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
the trend in relative mobility in the preindustrial period becomes not significant. However, the trend toward more openness during industrialization remains significant and of the same size or stronger (20.03 in model
2a; 20.04 in model 2b).
If we look at country-specific trends (fig. 3 and table 7), we can see that
during industrialization Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands clearly
show significantly decreasing association (i.e., an increase in openness)
and no change or even increasing association in the decades before the
onset of industrialization. Hungary and Sweden show the same pattern,
but the coefficients are not significant (note that mobility tables—and not
individuals—are the cases used in these analyses, and thus the sample size
is small). In France the trend toward more openness is significant before
industrialization but disappears thereafter. Finland does not show significant changes in association, and the direction of the changes contradicts
what we expected. We performed a post hoc test of whether trends in relative mobility in France and Finland deviated significantly from the average
trend in the other countries by adding interactions between (1) preindustrial
time and the two countries and (2) industrial time and the two countries.
The first two interactions have significant negative effects indicating that
the decrease in relative mobility in the preindustrial period did not take
place in France and Finland. The second two interactions have significant
TABLE 7
Changes in Relative Mobility over Time
Britain Finland France Germany Hungary Netherlands Sweden
Model 1
Constant . . . . . . . . . . .
Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adj. R2. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Model 2a
Constant . . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . . .
Industrial time . . . . . .
Adj. R2. . . . . . . . . . . . .
N.................
1.24** .87** 1.01**
2.04** 2.02 2.02**
.65
.21
.63
.60**
.00
.74
1.09**
.00
.00
1.00**
.01**
.45
.60**
.02**
.42
1.06** .66** .86**
.67**
2.01 2.03 2.03**
.02*
2.04** .10 2.00
2.04*
.63
.28
.70
.79
16
10
22
36
1.22**
.09
2.10
.21
10
1.13**
.03**
2.02**
.89
21
.77**
.02**
2.08
.44
19
NOTE.—Unstandardized coefficients of regression analysis of uniform difference parameters
on time, using splines. The Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data set; for the German analyses all data sets are combined and the model is estimated with a dummy variable for each data
set (Six Villages data being the reference category).
a
Model 2 contains splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period. All time effects are in decades (years/10). The industrial period is assumed to have
started in 1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands), or 1890 (Finland, Hungary,
Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
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American Journal of Sociology
positive effects, showing that in France relative mobility did not change at
all and in Finland it even decreased. France and Finland appear to be outliers in this respect.
Again we checked how robust our results are, given the differences between the data sets (app. table A5). First we investigate the influence of
higher-order marriages. In the British data set and the Dutch Genlias data
set higher-order marriages cannot be excluded. How does this affect the results? The data for Finland, France, Germany, and Hungary allow analyses
with and without higher-order marriages. The four countries show no systematic differences between the two sets of results. We can conclude that
support for the hypothesis of increasing relative mobility during industrialization in Britain and the Netherlands is not driven by the inclusion
of higher-order marriages. We also compared results from the two Dutch
data sets. The coefficients from the analyses do not differ much between
the data sets, but they are not significant in the case of the HSN data, probably as a result of fewer tables and the smaller sample size within each
table. The weighted Swedish data—containing fewer farmers’ sons—show
slightly different coefficients, but the results are not substantially different
from those using the unweighted data (the correlation between the two sets
of mobility parameters is 0.98). All in all, the robustness checks do not give
reason to doubt the conclusions from the main analyses. Overall, and in a
majority of countries, relative mobility increased after the onset of industrialization but not before that time.
We expected country differences in relative mobility to become smaller
during industrialization (our sixth hypothesis). Just as in the case of total
mobility, we calculated a set of coefficients of variation to test this hypothesis (see fig. 6). There is some support for the hypothesis of convergence
among countries with respect to relative mobility patterns. After 1880 a decrease in variation is evident. However, the differences among countries do
not become smaller than they were in the preindustrial period (between
1820 and 1860). The results would also be consistent with a temporary increase in country differences in relative mobility around the onset of
industrialization.
Finally, we decompose what is behind the trend toward increasing openness that we observed in most countries during industrialization. Does it
occur because the likelihood to remain in the same class as one’s father decreases, or because for those who do leave the father’s class, the likelihood to
move to specific destination classes becomes more equal? We estimate two
uniform difference parameters, one for the association in the complete table,
and one for the cells on the diagonal (see table 8).
The trend toward less openness that we observed in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden before the onset of industrialization is mainly caused
by an increase in the off-diagonal association. Both in the Netherlands and
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
FIG. 6.—Convergence and divergence of relative mobility in seven European countries, 1800–1914 (coefficients of variation).
in Sweden immobility already decreased in the preindustrialization period,
but this development was masked by an increasing off-diagonal association. Thus, not only in France, but also in these two countries, men were
increasingly likely to end up in a different class from that of their father,
even before industrialization started. However, their distribution over destination classes was increasingly unequal (after taking the different sizes of
the classes into account).
In general, the trend in mobility and that in immobility during industrialization were similar, but the changes in immobility were stronger and
more significant than those in mobility. For example, in Britain the overall
association between father’s and son’s class decreased with 0.04 per decade
(P < 0.01), whereas immobility decreased with 0.09 (P < 0.05), and the offdiagonal association with 0.03 (P < 0.01). In Hungary the overall trend in
relative mobility was not significant, but immobility significantly decreased
during industrialization, and in the Netherlands the overall increase in
openness seems completely caused by an increasing likelihood to leave
the parental class. Taking these two observations together, we can conclude
that changes in the likelihood for a son to remain in the parental class preceded changes in traversing over the whole social space and in some cases
seem to have started already before industrialization, although in all countries but France industrialization gave these changes a boost.
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1.22**
.09
2.10
.21
O
1.06**
2.01
2.04**
.63
I
1.26**
.08
2.10
.22
10
M
1.21**
2.10*
2.17**
.85
I
1.09**
1.15**
.03
2.05
2.03*
2.09**
.29
.48
16
HUNGARY
M
1.13**
.03**
2.02**
.89
O
.66**
2.03
.10
.28
O
1.17
.04**
2.00
.94
21
M
NETHERLANDS
.87**
2.01
2.00
.00
10
M
FINLAND
1.12**
2.02**
2.10**
.97
I
1.90**
2.01
2.44
.12
I
.77
.02**
2.08
.44
O
.86**
2.03**
2.00
.70
O
.88**
.01*
2.13
.22
19
M
.91**
2.02**
.00
.58
22
SWEDEN
M
FRANCE
1.33**
2.04*
2.29
.35
I
.77**
2.07**
2.01
.52
I
.67**
.02*
2.04*
.79
O
.68**
.02
2.00
.63
36
M
GERMANY
.74**
.02
2.13
.68
I
NOTE.—Unstandardized coefficients of regression analysis of uniform difference parameters on time, using splines. The Dutch analyses pertain to the
Genlias data set; for the German analyses all data sets are combined and the model is estimated with a dummy variable for each data set (Six Villages data
being the reference category). O 5 overall; M 5 mobility; I 5 immobility.
a
The models contain splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period. All time effects are in decades (years/10). The
industrial period is assumed to have started in 1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands), or 1890 (Finland, Hungary, Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
Constant . . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . . .
Industrial time . . . . . .
Adj. R2 . . . . . . . . . . . .
N.................
Constant . . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . . .
Industrial time . . . . . .
Adj. R2 . . . . . . . . . . . .
N.................
O
BRITAIN
TABLE 8
Changes in Relative Mobility: Overall and Separately for Mobility and Immobility
Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
CONCLUSION
We asked how total and relative mobility from father to son changed in European societies during industrialization. We derived hypotheses on total
and relative mobility with regard to the amount of mobility within countries, differences between countries, and their convergence. We tested these
hypotheses on a large and harmonized data set for seven European countries in the period 1800–1914. Taking all evidence together, qualified support is found for the industrialization hypotheses. Although country differences are not predicted well, the predicted increase of total and relative
mobility at the onset of industrialization has been supported. In the following we discuss the results in more detail.
An unexpected finding of our study is the similar development of total
and relative mobility. Although the industrialization thesis predicts similar
trends, a considerable body of previous research suggested differently. Total mobility was either expected to be rather unpredictable or to follow more
or less directly from changes in class distribution—which of course cannot
be true for relative mobility. Our study shows similar developments in both
types of mobility over time and similar relative positions of countries with
respect to both types of mobility.
The industrialization thesis predicts that both total and relative mobility
increased during the 19th century as a consequence of industrialization. In
early industrializing countries (Britain), this should occur earlier than in
countries that industrialized somewhat later (France, Germany, and the
Netherlands) or much later (Finland, Hungary, and Sweden). Our study
shows that both total and relative mobility increased in all countries together as well as in most countries separately, following the periodization
predicted by the industrialization thesis. At the onset of industrialization
total and relative mobility started to increase in five of the seven countries
in our study (Finland and France being the odd ones out). Not only for total
mobility, but also in the case of relative mobility, it was mainly the likelihood of sons to stay in exactly the same class as their father’s that decreased.
These results suggest that the onset of industrialization may indeed have
been a turning point. When we relate our findings to comparisons in the
same tradition (Ganzeboom et al. 1989; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992;
Wong 1992; and Breen 2004) we can draw a tentative conclusion about
changes in mobility on the very long run. Our conclusion is tentative, because we observed the period 1800–1914, and the other studies examined
the period after the Second World War, while the interbellum remains unobserved. Furthermore the two sets of studies are not comparable in a strict
sense. The results suggest that in Europe a trend toward more mobility
took place that started during the Industrial Revolution and lasted until
now.
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Both in the 19th and in the second half of the 20th century, countries can
be distinguished in which such a trend cannot be observed. In the 19th century, Finland and France deviated from the general pattern. In late industrializing Finland no changes in total and relative mobility are observed in
our main analyses. We do, however, observe an increase in total mobility
when we take into account that we cannot observe mobility of sons for
which information on the father was not noted on the marriage act. Further
research is necessary to discern whether these findings hold with more data
and when investigating a longer period after the onset of industrialization.
With around 4,000 cases, the Finnish data set is by far the smallest in our
study. Most observations are from before the onset of industrialization,
making it difficult to observe an effect. In France total and relative mobility
increased after the beginning of the 19th century, but this increase slowed
down during industrialization. In the literature it is sometimes suggested
that it was not industrialization but the French Revolution that was the
key historical event that opened up French society, although there is doubt
as to whether it had an enduring effect (Sorokin 1959; Bourdieu et al. 2009).
Our data do not permit us to test this hypothesis, since they do not extend
as far back as the prerevolution period. However, our findings do show
that, at the beginning of the 19th century, France experienced a trend toward increasing intergenerational mobility that lasted at least half a century. Although our study includes more countries than were examined in
previous studies, data from even more countries are desirable to determine
whether the observed trends in five out of the seven countries reflect the general pattern and France and Finland are deviations. A study covering a longer time period would also be advantageous to discern if these two countries
permanently or only temporarily deviate from the other countries.14
The industrialization thesis fails to explain the sizable differences in total
and relative mobility between countries. Sweden and Germany showed a
high level of total and relative mobility. Whereas the results for Germany
should be interpreted with care because of the poorer data quality, those
for Sweden are surprising, since this is a late industrializing country. Rela-
14
Alternatively, one might compare our results with analyses of surveys on late industrializing countries. Whelan and Layte (2002), e.g., studied Ireland, Torche (2005), Chile,
and Ishida (2003), Japan. According to these studies, in none of these countries did relative mobility change in the period of industrialization. Many of the problems connected
with previous studies on 19th-century changes in mobility, however, also apply to these
studies. The period studied by these authors is relatively short, the number of cases not
too large, and differences in approach make the studies hard to compare among each
other and with our study. These late industrializing countries are also more likely to differ
from the countries in our study with respect to political regime, and they industrialize in a
different context, experiencing competition from countries that industrialized much earlier. Adding more studies on 19th-century Europe thus still seems to be needed.
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
tive mobility was also relatively high in Finland and unexpectedly low in
the Netherlands. Relative mobility in the Netherlands was comparable to
that in Hungary, but Hungary had a much larger agricultural sector and
started to industrialize 20 years later. Both in Hungary and in the Netherlands the low relative mobility seems to be mainly caused by the immobility of farmers. Why that is the case in two such different countries requires
further investigation. Britain, the most industrialized country during the
19th century, took a middle position with respect to both total and relative
mobility.
For the 20th century Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992) too find that Britain (England and Scotland) took a middle position together with France.
And also, in their study, total mobility rates were high in Sweden. Some
of their findings deviate from ours, though. Germany does not show exceptionally high mobility in their study, which may be due to the poorer quality
of our German data. Furthermore, we find a low level of total mobility in
Hungary, whereas their study shows Hungary to be the most mobile of
all their countries, possibly caused by the political intervention of the communist regime after the Second World War. The high level of total mobility in Sweden and the intermediate level of total mobility in Britain
and France are, however, consistent over the 19th and a large part of the
20th century. Ganzeboom et al. (1989) present country-specific levels of relative mobility. In the 19th century relative mobility was relatively high in
Germany, Sweden, and Finland, and low in Hungary and the Netherlands.
In the 20th century this was still true for Finland and for the Netherlands.
Hungary became relatively more open over time, in line with its higher total mobility rates in the 20th than in the 19th century. Germany, France,
and Sweden form a middle group, and England was relatively open in
the 20th century.
If the level of industrialization is not clearly related to these country differences in total and relative mobility, how should these differences then be
explained? One possibility is that the observed country differences are due
to differences between the data sets, which are not completely identical.
Some are more representative, some are larger, and some contain not only
first but also later marriages. However, the main source in all countries are
marriage records, and occupations have been coded into the same occupational classification and transferred to the same class schema. Furthermore
we tested as best as we could the consequences of data quirks via several
sensitivity analyses, and the results of the main analyses are robust. Together with the finding that 19th-century country differences are not so different from 20th-century country differences, this makes us believe that
data issues are not the explanation for the failure of the data to comply with
the theory. The previous comparisons of country differences suggest some
explanations. Political regime change may play a role. This is suggested
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American Journal of Sociology
both by the relatively high level of mobility in France in the first half of
the 19th century, shortly after the French Revolution, and by the drastic
changes in the relative position with respect to total and relative mobility
in Hungary. Another explanation may be found in long and enduring country differences, such as in culture, religion, or political institutions. The
high rates of mobility in Sweden and Finland (especially relative mobility
in the case of Finland) and the low rates in the Netherlands seem to have
lasted over two centuries. In Sweden and Finland, the Lutheran church
may have played an important role. Large parts of the population in both
Sweden and Finland were members of this church and were pressed, by
the church and the state alike, to learn to read in order to understand the
Bible (Johansson 1981). This may have opened up new occupational opportunities for lower-class people in these two countries. In the other countries in our study, no such reading campaign existed, at least not until much
later, when elementary education became obligatory. This does not explain
why, though, Dutch society was so closed, as this was also a literate country
early on.
While we have been able to demonstrate that total and relative mobility
were on the rise at the same time as industrialization in European countries,
we do not know whether industrialization was the cause. Alternatively,
changes that took place at the same time and sometimes as a consequence
of industrialization, such as educational expansion, the growth of communication, or an increase in travel, made it more likely for sons to obtain occupations different from their fathers. We think this study provides only
qualified support for the industrialization thesis, because we do not yet
know whether industrialization was the true cause of the changes or one
of the concomitant processes. Furthermore, one country, France, shows a
development over time against the predictions of the logic of industrialization theory, and country differences are not well predicted by the theory,
even though trends in total and relative mobility among the first industrializing nations in the world are rather well predicted. All told, we believe the
historical record available to us now suggests that in Europe a trend toward
more social mobility took place that started during the Industrial Revolution
and lasted until now.
APPENDIX
In figure A1, the solid lines represent the main analyses. Dashed lines represent robustness checks.
1. For Germany the solid line represents predicted scores (table 5, model 2)
from all data sets combined.
2. For the Netherlands the main analyses pertain to the Genlias data set
and the robustness check to the HSN data.
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Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility
3. For Sweden the robustness check uses data weighted to represent the
original distribution of son’s class.
4. For Finland, France, and Hungary the robustness check includes
higher-order marriages: figures are not shown, because the lines perfectly coincide.
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FIG. A1.—Total mobility (proportions) in seven European countries, 1800–1914, main
analyses and robustness checks.
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Type of Data
Coverage
Voland (2011)
Mooser (1990)
First marriages 6,902/4,651
First marriages 886/578
First marriages 15,415/8,076
HSN (2008)
1,036,193/509,344a Genlias (2009)
Imhof (1998)
First marriages 4,286/2,088
All marriages
Knodel (1988)
Kaelble and Federspiel (1990)
Ditt (1990), Schüren (1990)
Reference
First marriages 7,190/3,651
First marriages 2,606/1,653
First marriages 3,851/1,791
N Original/
N Analyses
b
Second- and higher-order marriages cannot be excluded.
The Genlias data come from the Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg (release June 7, 2006), Historisch Centrum Overijssel (release April 7, 2005), the
Gelders Archief (release November 1, 2006), Zeeuws Archief (release June 28, 2004), Groninger Archieven (release March 16, 2007), and Drents Archief (release August 2010).
c
HSN: Historical Sample of the Netherlands. Data Set Civil Certificates Release 2008.01
a
1800–1914 Clan registers
Complete population
1825–1909 Marriages (church) Random sample
1830–1914 Marriages (church) Sample stratified by social
class (Bielefeld)
1800–1849 Clan registers
Complete population of villages
and cities
1800–1874 Marriages (church) Complete population of villages
and cities
Quernheim . . . . . 1800–1874 Marriages (church) Complete population of parish
Netherlands:
All marriages in 6 (out of 11)
Genliasb . . . . . . . . 1810–1914 Marriages (civil)
provinces
Random sample of birth
HSNc . . . . . . . . . . 1830–1914 Marriages (civil)
certificates Netherlands
Germany:
Six Villages . . . . .
Berlin . . . . . . . . .
Bielefeld and
Borghorst . . . .
Hamburg and
Villages . . . . . .
Ost-Friesland . . .
Period
TABLE A1
Characteristics of the German and Dutch Data Sets
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B
21.01**
.02
.10
5,216
A
2.98**
.02
.17
4,257
A
2.79**
.06**
.02
24,452
B
2.77
.06**
.02
26,556
FRANCE
2.04
2.03*
.06**
14,412
A
2.07
2.03**
.06**
16,569
B
GERMANY
2.93**
2.15**
.23**
31,060
A
2.94**
2.15**
.23**
34,036
B
HUNGARY
2.25**
2.08**
.03**
509,344
A
2.29**
2.09**
.04*
8,076
C
NETHERLANDS
A
2.28**
2.03**
.47**
23,384
D
2.19**
2.00
.28**
23,384
SWEDEN
NOTE.—Coefficients (b) of logistic regression of intergenerational mobility on time, using splines. The main Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data set;
for the German analyses all data sets are combined and the model is estimated with a dummy variable for each data set (Six Villages data being the reference
category). A 5 original model, B 5 including higher-order marriages, C 5 alternative data set: HSN, D 5 weighed by original distribution of son’s class.
The model contains splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period, and a dummy variable distinguishing these two
periods. All time effects are in decades (years/10). The industrial period is assumed to have started in 1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands),
or 1890 (Finland, Hungary, Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
Constant . . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . . .
Industrial time . . . . . .
N.................
FINLAND
TABLE A2
Robustness Checks of Changes in Total Mobility: In Preindustrial Years, and during Industrialization
TABLE A3
Changes in Total Mobility over Time and with Taking Missing
Information on Father’s Class into Account
Britain Finland France Germany Hungary Netherlands Sweden
Constant . . . . . . . . . 2.92** 2.78** 2.23
2.82** 22.15**
2.04
2.40*
Preindustrial
time . . . . . . . . . . . 2.05
.02
.04**
.05
2.12**
2.08**
2.02**
Industrial time . . . .
.09**
.26*
.02
.04*
.18**
.02**
.50**
% father missing . . .
.01
2.02* 2.01
.02**
.03**
2.00**
.00
Model v2 (df ). . . . . . 89.97 (3) 9.77 (3) 94.03 (3) 276.38 (8) 167.34 (3) 1247.29 (3) 31.30 (3)
N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,836
4,257 24,452 14,412
31,060
509,344
23,384
NOTE.—Coefficients (b) of logistic regression of intergenerational mobility on time, using
splines. The Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data set; for the German analyses all data
sets are combined and the model is estimated with a dummy variable for each data set (Six Villages data being the reference category). The model contains splines for the effects of time in
the preindustrial period and the industrial period. All time effects are in decades (years/10).
The industrial period is assumed to have started in 1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany,
Netherlands), or 1890 (Finland, Hungary, Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
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TABLE A4
Changes in Relative Mobility over Time, with Missing Information
on Father’s Class and without Farmer’s Immobility
Constant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Industrial time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
% father missing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adjusted R2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
N...........................
Model 1a
Model 2a
Model 1b
Model 2b
1.03**
2.01*
1.04**
1.00**
2.01**
1.01**
.01
2.03**
2.18**
.05
2.27**
.26**
.24**
2.10
2.00*
.79
134
2.22**
2.03
2.34**
.15**
.14*
2.23**
2.00
.82
134
2.00
2.04**
2.08
.03
2.12*
.16**
.09*
2.34**
2.15**
2.02
2.17**
.06
.04
2.42**
.70
134
.73
134
NOTE.—Unstandardized coefficients of regression analysis of uniform difference parameters
on country and time, using splines, all countries combined. The Dutch analyses pertain to the
Genlias data set; for Germany all data sets are combined and the model is estimated with a
dummy variable for each dataset (Six Villages data being the reference category). Missing data
on father’s class are used in models 1a and 2a; models without farmers’ immobility are 1b and 2b.
Model 2 contains splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period. All time effects are in decades (years/10). The industrial period is assumed to have started in
1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands), or 1890 (Finland, Hungary, Sweden).
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
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.66**
2.03
.10
.28
10
.65**
2.03*
.13
.29
B
.86**
2.03**
2.00
.70
A
22
B
.86**
2.02**
2.00
.66
FRANCE
.67**
.02*
2.04*
.79
A
36
.68**
.01
2.03*
.71
B
GERMANY
1.22**
.09
2.10
.21
A
10
1.18**
.07
2.07
.28
B
HUNGARY
1.13**
.03**
2.02**
.89
21
A
1.05**
.02
2.03
.06
15
C
NETHERLANDS
.77
.02**
2.08
.44
A
19
D
.75**
.02*
2.03
.28
SWEDEN
NOTE.—Regression analysis of uniform difference parameters on time, using splines. The main Dutch analyses pertain to the Genlias data set; for the
German analyses all data sets are combined and the model is estimated with a dummy variable for each data set (Six Villages data being the reference category). The model contains splines for the effects of time in the preindustrial period and the industrial period, and a dummy variable distinguishing these two
periods. All time effects are in decades (years/10). The industrial period is assumed to have started in 1850 (Britain), 1870 (France, Germany, Netherlands), or
1890 (Finland, Hungary, Sweden).
A 5 original model, B 5 including higher-order marriages, C 5 alternative data set: HSN, D 5 weighed by original distribution of son’s class.
* P < .05.
** P < .01.
Constant . . . . . . . . . .
Preindustrial time . . .
Industrial time . . . . .
Adjusted R2 . . . . . . . .
N
A
FINLAND
TABLE A5
Robustness Checks of Changes in Relative Mobility
American Journal of Sociology
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