Class Mobility in Israel, 1974-1991*

Introduction One of the main objectives of this volume is to engage with the long lasting debate in sociology regarding the consequences of the industrialisation process for social mobility. At the heart of this debate is the so-called 'liberal thesis of industrialisation' which states that the industrialisation process brings about not only more opportunity for social mobility, but also more equality of opportunity as social selection processes become more meritocratic (cf. arguments against this thesis). In this context, Israeli society will serve as a case study (along with the other eleven studies in this volume) to answer two main questions: (i) Has the Israeli mobility and fluidity pattern increased over time? (ii) Has the mobility process in Israeli society become more meritocratic over time? It has previously been argued that in the context of the above-mentioned debate Israeli society, along with the Republic of Ireland (see Whelan and Layte in this volume), provides one of the most adequate tests of the industrialisation thesis (Yaish, 1998; 2000). This is claimed on t wo grounds. First, Israeli society has undergone immense economic (as well as demographic) changes over a very short period of time. Secondly, high quality data are readily available to link these changes to social mobility. In what follows, then, I study changes over time (or lack of them) in the Israeli mobility and fluidity patterns by comparing results from two nationally representative cross-sectional mobility surveys in Israel; the A common element in the studies that have used the tabular approach is their exclusion of women from the analysis. These studies, moreover, display a wide range of variation in their analytical techniques, methodologies, the 2 populations studied, and ultimately in the quality of their data. A classification of these studies along these dimensions would identify the following three 'generations' of social mobility research in Israel: 1. Studies from the 1960s and early 1970s. Mobility studies in this period used occupational categories between which only inflow and outflow percentages of Israeli society were examined. The majority of the studies in this period, however, were typically based on incomplete, and often dubious, data of only certain sections of Israeli society (cf. an exception in this period is the study by Matras and Weintraub (1977), who examined the mobility of all Israeli men). 2. Studies from the 1980s and 1990s. Compared with the previous generation, mobility studies in this period can be said …