Occupational Inheritance: A Cross-national Analysis

The level of "pure mobility," or what is termed here "occupational inheritance," in thirteen nations is linked to a set of independent variables drawn from a theoretical statement by Kingsley Davis, which indicated that a substantial part of this variance can be blamed on measurement error.

Abstract

The level of "pure mobility," or what is termed here "occupational inheritance," in thirteen nations is linked to a set of independent variables drawn from a theoretical statement by Kingsley Davis. Davis argues that a certain level of "selection by talent" and hence mobility must exist if economic development is to proceed. Measures of technology, national structures facilitating mobility, family size, and the rural composition of the manual stratum are correlated against our measure of occupational inheritance. We account for 77 per cent of the variation in inheritance with these variables, when sons of farm fathers are included with the urban manual stratum. A separate analysis of occupational inheritance of non-farm sons in nine nations explanined 59 per cent of the variation in inheritance. A discussion of the unexplained variance indicated that a substantial part of this variance can be blamed on measurement error, especially in the dependent variable. Efforts to link measures of political structure and stability, and the achievement motive to variation in national mobility rates (measured either in terms of pure mobility or total mobility), failed.