Class Transformation, Qualification Inflation and the Persistence of Class: Trends in Social Fluidity in the Republic of Ireland 1973 to 1994. ESRI WP123. November 1999

Whelan, Christopher T. and Layte, Richard (1999) Class Transformation, Qualification Inflation and the Persistence of Class: Trends in Social Fluidity in the Republic of Ireland 1973 to 1994. ESRI WP123. November 1999. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

One of the central themes of social mobility research to date has been the validity of the ‘industrialization thesis’ as propounded by Lipset & Bendix (1959) and Blau & Duncan (1967). This held that economically advanced societies would share a high level of social mobility because this was necessary for these types of societies to function. Such uniformly high rates of mobility would come about they argued, first because these societies spawned a large number of higher managerial and professional positions, but also because these positions would be filled on the basis of meritocratic and ‘universalistic’ principles rather than social position and family connections. The former directs attention to changes in absolute mobility rates while the latter leads to a focus on relative rates. Yet, although numerous tests of this thesis have presented contrary evidence, almost all have used data from countries that have already reached industrial maturity. It could be argued that these data do not permit a full test of the industrialization thesis since they do not allow us to compare mobility patterns in the same country before and after the ‘great transformation’ (Polanyi 1957). A possible exception to this are studies on the Republic of Ireland1 which underwent Industrialisation particularly rapidly and comparatively recently since transition was still underway in the early 1970s. However, even these studies have examined possible changes in social fluidity between cohorts, or within individual careers and have not compared fluidity between data sets collected at different points in time using individuals who would have experienced different structural conditions.

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