# Class, Mobility and Its Myths

Sociology I · Foundations and the Great Themes · https://tryals.app/learn/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths

## Openness Is Not the Same as Movement

Class begins with two rival definitions:

- **Marx**: defined class relationally by ownership of the means of production.
- **Weber**: split inequality into three distinct dimensions:
  - **class**: a shared market situation
  - **status**: a shared level of social honour
  - **party**: the organised pursuit of power

Modern sociology inherits this division:

| | Erik Olin Wright | John Goldthorpe |
|---|---|---|
| Grounded in | Exploitation and productive assets | Employment contracts |
| Key distinction | Capital, organisation, and skill assets | **Service relationship** vs **labour contract** |
| Managers | Occupy **contradictory class locations** | Are in a service class |
| Schema purpose | Theory of exploitation | Predict life chances and mobility |

Wright focuses on exploitation. **Goldthorpe** focuses on monitoring costs and asset specificity. Difficult monitoring yields a **service relationship** with long-term prospects. Easy monitoring yields a basic **labour contract**.

The resulting **EGP** schema informs official statistics across **Europe**.

## Measuring Mobility

Mobility has two distinct meanings:

- **Absolute mobility**: the proportion of people ending in a different class from their origin.
- **Relative mobility**: the comparative chance of reaching a destination from different origins, measured as an **odds ratio**.

Consider a cohort of **1,000** individuals:

| Origin | To service | To intermediate | To working | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---| 
| Service | **120** | 50 | **30** | 200 |
| Intermediate | **120** | **100** | 80 | 300 |
| Working | **150** | **150** | 200 | **500** |

Here, **60** per cent of service-origin individuals reach service destinations, versus **30** per cent from working origins. In absolute terms, **150** working-class individuals reached the top.

Yet the **odds** of reaching service rather than working destinations are 120/30 against 150/200. This yields an odds ratio of **5.3**.

**Erikson and Goldthorpe** showed that absolute mobility rose across industrial nations as structures shifted, while relative mobility remained largely the **Same**.

> **Common pitfall:** Confusing absolute movement with openness. Openness is **Not** merely more room at the top.

## Practice questions

9 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. After 1945 a far larger share of people in western Europe ended up in a higher class than their fathers. Why does that not by itself show that these societies became more open?

A. Intergenerational mobility shows life chances; openness needs intragenerational data
B. Expanding managerial jobs let more rise without class origins mattering any less
C. Growing white-collar roles increased downward mobility equally, balancing fluidity
D. Rising absolute movement keeps odds ratios fixed, hiding shifts in social openness

**Answer:** B. Expanding managerial jobs let more rise without class origins mattering any less

**Why:** The shape of the destination distribution changed. When the service class expands and the manual working class contracts, upward movement is forced by arithmetic: somebody has to fill the new positions. Openness is about whether origin still predicts destination once that expansion is accounted for, which is what an odds ratio measures and a headcount does not.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/after-1945-a-far-larger-share-of-people-in-western-europe-ended-up-in

### 2. Weber divided stratification into class, status and party. Which claims about that scheme are correct?

A. The three dimensions need not coincide in any given person or group
B. Party is Weber’s term for the ownership of the means of production
C. Class refers to a shared position in the market for goods, skills and labour
D. Status refers to social honour, which may be high where market position is weak

**Answer:** A. The three dimensions need not coincide in any given person or group; C. Class refers to a shared position in the market for goods, skills and labour; D. Status refers to social honour, which may be high where market position is weak

**Why:** The point of splitting the concept is that the dimensions can move independently: an impoverished aristocrat has status without class position, a wealthy outsider the reverse, and an organised group can pursue power without either. The second option smuggles Marx’s single axis back in under a Weberian label.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/weber-divided-stratification-into-class-status-and-party-which

### 3. Erikson and Goldthorpe found in The Constant Flux that relative mobility rates were broadly similar across industrial societies and fairly stable over time.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and the title says it: a great deal of movement, with the underlying pattern of relative chances remarkably persistent. The result has been challenged at the margins, several studies find modest equalisation in some countries and periods, but the broad finding of persistence has held up well.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/erikson-and-goldthorpe-found-in-the-constant-flux-that-relative

### 4. Complete the vocabulary of mobility analysis.

**Answer:** The proportion of people who end in a class different from their origin is called **absolute** mobility. The comparative chance of people from two different origins reaching the same destination is called **relative** mobility, and it is usually expressed as an **odds** ratio. Reading a mobility table across the rows gives the **outflow** percentages from each origin.

**Why:** The row and column directions answer different questions and are constantly confused in public argument. Outflow asks where people of a given origin ended up; inflow asks where the people now in a given destination came from. A destination class can be full of people from humble origins simply because humble origins were common.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/complete-the-vocabulary-of-mobility-analysis

### 5. Arrange the steps of reading a mobility table properly, in order.

**Answer:**

1. Identify which dimension holds origins and which holds destinations
2. Compute the percentage of each origin group arriving at each destination
3. Compare those percentages across origins to see whether chances differ
4. Form the odds of one destination against another within each origin
5. Divide one set of odds by the other to obtain a measure independent of the destination structure

**Why:** Each step strips out one source of confusion. Percentages remove the effect of unequal origin group sizes; comparing across origins reveals the differences in chances; odds remove the effect of how many positions of each kind exist. Stopping at step two is what produces most of the confident nonsense written about mobility.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/arrange-the-steps-of-reading-a-mobility-table-properly-in-order

### 6. In the mobility table in this lesson, 150 of the 500 men of working-class origin reached the service class. What percentage of that origin group is that?

**Answer:** 30 (within ±0.01)

**Why:** **30 per cent.** Set that against the 60 per cent of service-origin men who reached the service class and the shape of the inequality becomes visible: a working-class son had half the chance, even in a cohort where more service-class arrivals came from working-class origins than from anywhere else.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/in-the-mobility-table-in-this-lesson-150-of-the-500-men-of

### 7. An odds ratio is the standard measure of relative mobility. How does it strip out the effect of a changing occupational structure?

A. It compares origin groups on their internal odds of one destination over another, unaffected by total positions of either kind.
B. It standardises mobility rates by weighting each origin group according to its demographic share in the wider population over time.
C. It restricts the empirical analysis to mobile people by removing all individuals whose destination class matches their origin class.
D. It contrasts aggregate upward mobility directly against the total volume of downward moves across the full occupational structure.

**Answer:** A. It compares origin groups on their internal odds of one destination over another, unaffected by total positions of either kind.

**Why:** Because the odds are formed inside each origin group and then compared, the calculation never touches the size of the destination categories. Expanding the service class raises both groups’ odds together, and the ratio between them is unchanged, which is precisely the property that makes it a measure of openness rather than of movement.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/an-odds-ratio-is-the-standard-measure-of-relative-mobility-how-does

### 8. Because the service class expanded so much after 1945, sons of working-class fathers came to face the same chance of entering it as sons of service-class fathers.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** In the illustrative table the chances are 30 per cent against 60 per cent, an odds ratio above five. Expansion of the destination class raised the absolute numbers arriving from every origin without equalising the rates, which is exactly the distinction the lesson turns on.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/because-the-service-class-expanded-so-much-after-1945-sons-of

### 9. Erik Olin Wright analyses classes through exploitation and contradictory locations, whilst John Goldthorpe bases his schema on employment contracts. How does this theoretical divergence affect how each sociologist conceptualises a corporate manager?

A. Wright sees an exploiter-dominated position; Goldthorpe sees a distinct contract
B. Wright treats them as owning capital; Goldthorpe treats them as manual labour
C. Wright views them as wage labour; Goldthorpe views them as full-scale capitalists
D. Wright assigns them to the elite; Goldthorpe assigns them to intermediate ranks

**Answer:** A. Wright sees an exploiter-dominated position; Goldthorpe sees a distinct contract

**Why:** Wright focuses on how managers balance authority and exploitation between capital and labour, whereas Goldthorpe identifies a service relationship governed by trust, autonomy, and long-term career prospects rather than monitoring.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/class-mobility-and-its-myths/erik-olin-wright-analyses-classes-through-exploitation-and