Trends in Occupational Mobility in Indianapolis

Intergenerational occupational mobility patterns measured from survey data collected in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1966 and 1968 were compared to patterns present in Rogoff's 1910 and 1940 marriage license data. The following moderate differences appeared between the 196668 and the earlier data: (1) the proportion of people moving out of their stratum of origin remained about the same, but among the movers upward mobility became more common and downward mobility less common; (2) the linear dependence of son's occupation on father's occupation increased, mainly due to a high level of dependence for men under 24 years of age in 1966-68; (3) the 1966-68 mdbility process, compared to the 1940 process, tended to produce an upgrading within both manual and nonmanual categories. B oth theoretical and applied interests have led American sociologists to ask whether the American class structure is becoming more open, more rigid, or remaining approximately the same over time. In studies of this problem, rates of occupational mobility have frequently been used as indicators of "openness" or permeability, on the grounds that occupational prestige is a useful single indicator of social class (see Chinoy, 1955:181; Miller, 1960:4-5). Thus, trends in occupational mobility rates are assumed to reflect trends in the rigidity of the class structure. In this study we focus on trends in intergenerational occupational mobility rates. Past empirical work on such trends in the United States has been done either by comparing agecohorts from a single cross-section survey or by comparing two or more surveys of the same population taken at different times. If age-cohorts from a given survey differ in intergenerational mobility patterns, the differences can be interpreted as due to changes in the permeability of the stratification system, to differences in the length of work experience of men in the different cohorts (i.e., to intragenerational mobility), or to a mixture of the two. For this reason, Duncan (1968:711) concludes: "Efforts to infer mobility trends from cross-sectional age data on the contemporaneous experiences of different cohorts must be rejected." However, several age-cohort studies have been done which introduce procedures specifically designed to solve, or at least minimize, this problem of interpretation. Lenski (1958), using data from a 1952 Survey Research Center national sample, conducted an age-cohort analysis of intergenerational mobility using the occupational categories, white* We wish to express our appreciation to Robert Cushing, Patricia Selmanoff, Marlene Simon, and Robert Stirling for assistance in the 1966 data collection; to Marvin E. Olsen for allowing us to use data from the 1968 Indianapolis Area Project; and to Donald G. McTavish for making his occupational scoring technique available to us. Data collection and analysis have been supported by Public Health Service Grants MH 10991 and MH 12263, National Science Foundation Grant GS 1020, and an Indiana University Faculty Research Grant. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.103 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 04:24:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY 187 collar, blue-collar, and farm. He attempted to control for career effects by adjusting the occupational distributions of the two youngest and two oldest age-cohorts for shifts due to intragenerational mobility. He concluded that during the first half of this century (1) the rate of upward intergenerational mobility into white-collar occupations increased due to the expansion in the proportion of white-collar jobs and due to the declining ratio of farmers' sons (who have a poorer chance of upward mobility) to blue-collar workers' sons; (2) the rate of downward intergenerational mobility at the end of the period corresponded roughly to that at the beginning; and (3) the percentage of farmers' sons entering the white-collar category steadily increased until the middle cohort and then dropped sharply for the most recent cohorts (Lenski, 1958: 523). Duncan (1965), making cohort comparisons within a large national sample of males collected in 1962, adjusted for length of worklife by comparing the actual occupational distribution of a cohort in 1952 to its "expected" distribution produced by the mobility matrix of the next younger cohort. Discrepancies were attributed to (net) changes in patterns of mobility. Duncan concluded that: the 1962 matrices produced more 'upward' mobility-particularly into salaried professional and technical positions-and less 'downward' mobility-into lower blue-collar and farm occupations-than did the 1952, 1942, or 1932 matrices. As of 1962, there was little immediate cause for anxiety about whether the American occupational structure was providing more restricted opportunities. .The simplest method employed to make intercohort comparisons interpretable is to restrict the mobility measured to the movement from occupation of origin to first occupation. Since all respondents are scored on a job held at a comparable point in their careers, differences between cohorts can be interpreted as genuine trends in mobility patterns. Blau and Duncan (1967:107-111) analyzed differences between four age-cohorts from their 1962 sample in terms of mobility to first job. They found a consistent trend for sons from farm origin to move increasingly into white-collar or manual jobs rather than farming occupations. The amount of minimum mobility "implied" by structural factors (this concept is discussed in more detail below) declined from the older to the younger cohorts and the amount of movement in excess of this minimum rose. Dependence of son's occupation on father's declined slightly for the total sample. When comparison was restricted to sons from urban origins, however, changes in dependence practically vanished (see also Duncan, 1968:700701, 710). The broad conclusion about trends suggested by these cohort studies is that upward mobility is increasing somewhat over time while downward mobility is remaining about the same or decreasing. There is little evidence that the class structure is becoming more rigid. Providing a more direct estimate of intergenerational mobility trends, there are also available in the literature several studies which compare mobility in samples collected from the same population at two or more different times. Jackson and Crockett (1964) compared mobility rates in four national survey studies: Centers' 1945 study, a 1947 NORC study, and 1952 and 1957 Survey Research Center studies. They concluded that ". . . the rate of occupational mobility in the United States has increased somewhat since the end of World War II. At the least, we fo'und scant evidence that the system of occupational inheritance is growing more rigid." Blau and Duncan (1967:97-105) extended the scope of Jackson and Crockett's comparisons by adding their large national sample for 1962 and adjusting for sampling error found in the 1947 NORC data. Their conclusions are the same: "the data suggest that mobility has slightly increased in the last 10 or 15 years. At least -there is no indication of increasing rigidity in the class structure." The study providing a direct comparison of mobility rates over the longest time period is Rogoff's (1953) study of Indianapolis, Indiana. Since the object of our analysis will be to extend Rogoff's comparison, we shall describe her procedures in some detail. Rogoff used as her data the occupations of grooms and their fathers as recorded on marriage license applications in Marion County, This content downloaded from 207.46.13.103 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 04:24:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms