In 2007, sons are as likely to pursue occupations similar to their fathers in Britain as
they are in the United States. Yet according to new research by Professors Jason
Long and Joseph Ferrie, in the Victorian era, ‘intergenerational occupational mobility’
was considerably greater in the United States than in Britain.
Their study, published in the March 2007 issue of the Economic Journal, explains why
economic mobility across generations began to converge between the two countries in
the second half of the nineteenth century – a combination of more widely available
education in Britain and a maturing US economy.
It also suggests why public opinion in these countries continues to display very different
beliefs about intergenerational mobility. For example, 26% of Americans compared with
only 13% of Britons state that hard work – rather than luck, like the occupation of one's
father – determines economic success. Differences between the modern US and British
welfare states reflect these attitudes.
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, observers as diverse as Alexis de
Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Werner Sombart claimed that mobility across generations
was vastly greater in the United States than in European countries, particularly Britain.
The latter two commentators attributed the lack of a viable socialist political party in the
United States to these high rates of mobility.
The researchers follow more than 10,000 pairs of fathers and sons in the United States
and Britain for several 20-year intervals between 1860 and 1900. They do this by
following individuals from one census enumeration (where they are observed in their
parents' household) to another enumeration 20 years later (when they are observed as
independent individuals).
This makes it possible to assess – for the first time, with concrete, nationally
representative data – the claims of observers like de Tocqueville, Marx and Sombart.
The study finds that, on the whole, they were correct: intergenerational occupational
mobility was considerably greater in the United States than in Britain at least through
1901, though the gap between them declined over these four decades. For example, in
Britain, 46% of the sons of unskilled fathers in 1861 were themselves unskilled 20 years
later; in the United States, only 27% of the sons of unskilled fathers in 1860 failed to
escape unskilled jobs themselves over the next two decades.
These conclusions withstand adjustments for differences in the distribution of
occupations across countries, how occupations are grouped together and the specific
measures of intergenerational occupational mobility used.
The narrowing of the gap in intergenerational mobility between the United States and
Britain likely stemmed from two developments:
• The expansion of widely available education funded by the central government in
Britain – though education was more widely available in the United States in
1850, Britain had largely caught up by 1910.
• And the maturation of the US economy and the decreasing prominence of new
cities and regions that had rapidly grown and provided unparalleled opportunity
to those of humble birth in the last half of the 19th century.
These findings add to a growing body of research on why the US welfare state evolved
very differently from those in Europe. Research by Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser
– Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference – has focused on US
ethnic diversity and political fragmentation in explaining these divergent paths. This new
study adds another important difference: the histories of mobility in these otherwise
very similar economies.
The American and British welfare states were constructed after vastly different
experiences of economic mobility across generations. The American system reflects
rapid mobility without the need for substantial government redistribution. The British
system reflects, by contrast, considerably greater difficulty for sons in transcending the
disadvantages conveyed by the circumstances of their fathers without public
assistance.
The present day US and British tax and transfer systems continue to embody attitudes
shaped by these different historical legacies, even though their modern mobility rates
are the roughly similar.
ENDS
Notes for editors: ‘The Path to Convergence: Intergenerational Occupational Mobility
in Britain and the US in Three Eras’ by Jason Long and Joseph Ferrie is published in
the March 2007 issue of the Economic Journal.
Jason Long is at Colby College. Joseph Ferrie is at Northwestern University.
For further information: contact Joseph Ferrie on +1-847-491-8210 (email:
ferrie@northwestern.edu); or Romesh Vaitilingam on 07768-661095 (email:
romesh@compuserve.com).