The intergenerational social mobility of minority ethnic groups

This study examines the intergenerational social mobility of different ethnic groups in Britain between 1971 and 1991. The small body of previous research on intergenerational mobility and ethnicity in Britain has not distinguished between pre-migration and post-migration social class, and thus has been unable to relate findings directly to studies of intergenerational social mobility or to accounts of the changing class composition of different ethnic groups within Britain. This study, instead, focuses on social mobility between generations as it is experienced by different groups in the same country, over the same time period and over the same age range. Using data from the ONS Longitudinal Study, this study describes the different patterns of class mobility experienced by a single cohort of children aged 8-15 in 1971 from each of three ethnic groups: white non-migrants, Indians and Caribbeans. It finds that the relative importance of class origin varies with ethnicity; at the same time class origins can be found to operate in consistent ways across groups. It also finds that for women the impact of ethnicity is much less salient in determining outcomes than it is for men. NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY Parent’s social class tends to have an influence on children’s occupational outcomes. This paper looks at whether the relationship is the same for minority ethnic groups in Britain as it is for the population as a whole. The social class origins in of a cohort of 8 to 15-year olds are identified in 1971 and are distinguished according to three ethnic groups (white, Indian and Caribbean). The occupations of this same cohort are then recorded twenty years later, in 1991, and the relationships with origins assessed. This paper notes the very different starting positions of each group in that the class distributions of origin for the minority groups were heavily skewed towards manual occupations. It then shows how patterns of mobility need to be understood in relation to these different starting points, to changes in class structure over the twenty year period and to the impact of ethnicity, which varies between groups.