Talk:Social mobility

message: Whatever caste a person is born into, is what they will remain for the entirety of their life. -absolutely correct.
However, in cultures based on merit, like the United States or the United Kingdom, people are free to move up and down the social ladder. -absolutely incorrect. I cannot stress how impossibly wrong this statement is. It has been found by both the LSE and Unicef that it is none other than the United Kingdom (189th out of 189 countries studied) and the United States (188th out of 189 countries studied) that is the most segregated and socially immobile place on planet Earth. You are more likely to be judged on merit in Zimbabwe or any other African country than you are in the totalitarian capitalist elites of the western Anglosphere. In Africa, poor people are in the same level of poverty. In the UK, 99.99999% of the population are incredibly rich, and the remaining individuals are utterly destitute.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.198.128.158 (talk) 00:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saying the worst case is the best?! 

message: Cut from article:
:A common error when discussing social mobility is to focus on a few exemplary cases while neglecting the average cases. The fact that a few people who were originally poor have become very rich does not prove that the society in general enjoys social mobility, indeed they are exceptions. This view is often passed off as matter-of-fact in the United States in order to perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. 
Who says this is a common error? And who makes this error?
What are the various sides here? I daresay one side is criticizing the U.S. for not having high enough social mobility to justify a free market economy. The other side, presumably, is arguing that America is just fine and dandy, since anyone who works hard can get ahead. 
This is a key point around which advocacy about Minimum wage laws often hinges (see also Living wage). In a stratified society, socialists would want to take from the rich and give to the poor to equal things out a bit. Free market advocates would say, "Get off you butt, turn off the TV and get to work or hit the books."
How can we write about this dispute in a fair way that doesn't slant the article toward one POV or another? Friday, help me out here, please. --Uncle Ed 15:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Anti-capitalist bias

message: On race and intelligence, please  Slrubenstein   |  Talk 16:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  request for comments 

message: this section needs to be removed and replaced with arguments that can cite their sources:
Some think that big government (welfare, social security, nationalized healthcare) impedes on social mobility by raising taxes on the rich. They say that higher taxes lowers incentives to work towards a better life.
Others point to studies that show that social mobility is greater in societies with significant welfare states.
* Some think that - WHO thinks that?
* big government (welfare, social security, nationalized healthcare) - the term big government is a pejorative and indicates bias towards the subject.  this is weasel-wording and should be removed.
* They say that higher taxes lowers incentives to work towards a better life. - again who says that?  i don't know of a single rich person that didn't want to get richer because of the increased tax burden.  please provide a link to a study or a citation.
* Others point to studies that show that social mobility is greater in societies with significant welfare states. - who?
finally, the term "Welfare State" is another example of weasel-wording. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.223.226.6 (talk) 19:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: i feel this section is only saying "some groups say this, other groups say that" without supporting evidence, and with a biased tone to boot - i'm going to delete it.  if anyone thinks otherwise, i'm open to discussion (ps - i'm the author of the above initial criticism of this section) 192.223.226.6 18:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social Mobility and The Welfare State? 

message: Thank you to everyone for the comments. All of these comments raise important issues that will be addressed. The authors of this page are students in a sociology 101 class and have created this article as part of a class project. The article does have a Marxist slant. This is primarily a result of the fact that the students' exposure to theoretical explanations of mobility has thus far been limited to conflict theory. Don't worry, these concerns will be addressed. I just wanted to point out that the authors of this article are still learning so they may need a little time.
Velvet Llama 14:46, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Give it time. 

message: This section states that societies employing slavery are an example of very low social mobility, and that movement upwards for a slave is practically non-existent. There are however serious exceptions to this not given mention; for example, the Mamluk Sultanate.--KobaVanDerLubbe (talk) 04:10, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Social system section/slavery

message: The Indian caste system should be a classic case for studies in Social mobility.  This article does not cover the caste system.206.108.179.229 (talk) 20:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Inidan Caste system as a primary example 

message: Isn't the number of Inter-Caste or Inter-Racial marriages a good measure of social mobility in a society?
--Dr. Known-- (talk) 09:40, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  You're confusing social mobility (which describes changes over time within individuals) versus social distance (which describes interactions between individuals). Reevev (talk) 14:21, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Measuring Social Mobility 

message: There are several examples of poor logic in the portion of the article I have read so far. Example: "Relative mobility refers to the degree to which individuals move up or down compared to others in their cohort. In other words, relative mobility means that if your family is poor, you have a decent chance of moving up the relative income ladder." Firstly, the second sentence is in no way a rewording of the former sentence. Secondly, stating that if an individual is poor he or she has a high chance of upward social or economic mobility suggests that this is universally true, which it most certainly is not.
Another example: "[Intra-generational mobility] measures shifts in career at some point in the individual’s lifetime, where your occupational status is determined by individual merit. Thus, irrespective of family background, one can move from being an unskilled blue collar worker to becoming a CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation." I would suggest removing the word 'your' to maintain a neutral article. Also, suggesting that one can turn from rags to riches in the United States (or the Americas, since the section is simply titled "Mobility in the American workforce" and so it is unclear which understanding of "American" the author intended to convey) just because a term exists to describe this circumstance is illogical.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by TennysonXII (talk • contribs) 02:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logical fallacies 

message: Honors and Peerages aren't mentioned here but surely represent a huge upshift to the reciever. I don't know enough about the subject but should it be here?(90.219.214.188 (talk) 17:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Honors and Peerages. 

message: got linked to this article from another and it has an absolutely horrible intro, i think it's supposed to be reverted, but being a regular reader but only typo editor essentially i'm not going to do it for chance of screwing it up, just read the first line and you'll know something's wrong.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.84.91.4 (talk) 15:52, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It sounds like someone wanted to write a lead with as many wikilinks and jargon as possible in it, rather make it intelligible. I am attempting to rewrite it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 22:16, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  something terribly wrong with introduction 

message: Have trimmed the US section and created a social mobility in the United States article to answer complaints. Unfortunately the article has copyright problems and may face a big purge. --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  United States section 

message: There is so much overlap between these two concepts I think it makes sense to merge them into something like Socioeconomic mobility. 
At the very least some editing should be done to acknowledge the other article.  --BoogaLouie (talk) 16:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Disagree. I agree that they are related concepts but they also have their distinct definitions and characteristics. I agree that the two articles need "to acknowledge the other article".Farmanesh (talk) 18:24, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

text: I give up. Ya, maybe that's best. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:02, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

text: I searched and searched but could find nothing saying "the difference between social mobility and economic mobility is blah blah blah," so I used the Encyclopedia of Sociology. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed merger with [[Economic mobility]]

message: Can someone explain what is being graphed in the graph on the right? The section in the article is not clear. The article says that the US and the UK "the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility," but the graph, which has elasticity on the vertical axis, and having high elasticity generally means allowing more change (having high rigidity would mean having less change.) The article then says that the next four "worst" counties are Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada, but on the graph these are actually shown on the oposite side as the US and the UK, with France, Germany and Sweden between them. Any explanation? — Sam 63.138.152.219 (talk) 14:39, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Intergenerational earnings elasticity measures the extent to which earnings are passed across generations. The higher the value, the greater is the persistence of earnings across generations, thus the lower is the intergenerational earnings mobility. Take, for example, a country with an intergenerational earnings elasticity of 0.20. This means that if someone in that country earns $10,000 less income than the average, 20 per cent of that difference (or, $2,000) will be passed on to the individual’s children. In other words, the children will earn $2,000 less than the average. A higher number indicates that a greater percent of that income difference will be passed on to the next generation.  Flyte35 (talk) 17:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Country comparison graph 

message: Virtually everything in the Intergenerational mobility article is either already present or could easily be merged into the "Inter- and Intra-generational mobility" section of this article. Move the text of Intergenerational mobility over? Flyte35 (talk) 17:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved after proposed a week ago and receiving no objections.Flyte35 (talk) 18:07, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merger with [[Intergenerational mobility]] 

message: I will be working on a major re-write and update of this article.  Meclee (talk) 14:56, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Major re-write

message: This article appears to be about social mobility of men only. For example we know from status attainment research that mother's education and attitudes are important for women but not men. Is there really no research on women's mobility? If not you should change the title to "social mobility among men." 
Burressd (talk) 22:20, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about gender? 

message: Hello! I am interested in working with you on this article. I was thinking about adding more sections about the possible influencers on social mobility. I saw that you spoke about education and I'd like to add more information there. Additionally, I'd like to add new sections on the social mobilities of other countries. Please feel free to check out my User Page for the references of the articles I am considering using. EliGamez (talk) 05:28, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential Article Editing 

message: Hello! In my sandbox page I have written down my plan on how I intend to edit this article. I encourage those whom who it may concern to look at the plan. Please leave any suggestions on the talk page.EliGamez (talk) 05:19, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update: on Editing Article 

message: Hello all. I've reviewed the new markers section and would like to say the inclusion of this section improves this article. It's important to mention what contributes to social mobility, aside from just discussing what social mobility is. However, I would like to see this article to continue to be improved. I suggest expanding the subsections under markers because it's overshadowed by the more expansive subsections. I would also address passive voice & consider expanding the lead section to mention how markers impact social mobility. By including the markers in the lead section, readers will know that this topic is covered by this article. 
Mgregg21 (talk) 03:08, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvements 

message: I really think that the addition of the “Markers” sections adds more depth to the article, especially since knowing what factors affect social mobility is important and relevant. However, I would suggest going more in depth on each subsection to help readers gain a better understanding on the relationship between social mobility and each of the different markers mentioned. I enjoyed the simple and direct syntax that was contributed in the “Markers” section because it made for an easier read. One thing I would address moving forward is referring to more sources. I feel like some sections are heavily reliant on one or two sources, and I think this negatively affects the credibility of the article because it seems like it lacks a diversity of perspective. Overall, I think the contributions made to this article so far are relevant and significant! AMRara (talk) 06:13, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer Review Comments 

message: Otherwise, the additions are helpful.
Burressd (talk) 17:19, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Markers section needs to better distinguish US from world wide conditions