The grandparents effect in social mobility: evidence from British birth cohort studies

Using data from three British birth cohort studies, we examine the patterns of social mobility over three generations of family members. For both men and women, absolute mobility rates (i.e. total, upward, downward and outflow mobility rates) in the partial parents– children mobility tables vary substantially by grandparents’ social class. As regards relative mobility patterns, there is a statistically significant association between grandparents’ and grandchildren’s class positions, after parents’ social class has been taken into account. The net grandparents–grandchildren association can be summarised by a single uniform association parameter. Net of parents’ social class, the odds of grandchildren entering the professional–managerial class rather than the unskilled manual class are at least two and a half times better if the grandparents were themselves in professional–managerial ∗We thank Michael Biggs, John Ermisch, Jani Erola, David Firth, John Goldthorpe, Ashleigh Griffin, Pasi Moisio, Rebecca Sear, Louis-André Vallet, Chris Wildeman, Yu Xie, and ASR reviewers and editors for helpful advice and suggestions. Early versions of this paper were presented at the 2011 spring meeting of the ISA RC28, the 2012 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, the 2012 ECSR/Equalsoc conference, the conference on multigenerational inequality held at the University of Michigan, and at seminars at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. We thank the audience of these meetings for their helpful comments.