Intergenerational mobility from a historical perspective

This chapter gives an overview of the main hypotheses that have been formulated about macro determinants of intergenerational mobility in the pre-survey period and discusses the evidence in favour and against these hypotheses. Industrialization and related modernization processes, such as educational expansion, are often expected to have led to an increase in intergenerational mobility. The majority of trend studies support these hypotheses, but direct evidence on which processes exactly drove changes in intergenerational mobility is still scarce. Alternative explanations can therefore not be excluded. For example, war and revolutions are also expected to have raised the level of intergenerational mobility, as is the development of the welfare state. Future research should not only more directly test the mechanisms behind the theories, but also further specify how exactly societal characteristics affect the processes with which parents transfer their position to their children.