Intergenerational and intragenerational mobility social mobility
About this video
This lesson uses a family, Ian, Mary, and Jim, to explain two concepts of social mobility. Intragenerational mobility is a change in a person's social class during their own lifetime, while intergenerational mobility compares a person's social position with that of their parents across generations. The key difference is whether the comparison stays within one life or spans generations.
You'll be able to
- define intragenerational mobility as a change within one person's lifetime
- define intergenerational mobility as a change across generations, compared with parents
- use an example to tell the two kinds of mobility apart
Key words
- Social mobility
- Movement up or down the social hierarchy, such as between upper, middle, and lower classes.
- Intragenerational mobility
- Change in a person's social standing during their own lifetime.
- Intergenerational mobility
- Change in social standing across generations, compared with a person's parents.
- Social hierarchy
- The ranking of groups in society, often described as upper, middle, and lower classes.
Transcript
- Hello, I want you to meet this wonderful family. It's Mary, the mum, Jim, the dad and Ian, the son. And they're gonna help us to understand some key concepts about social mobility. Now Ian is an accountant, so he would be considered middle class. And if this triangle represents the upper class at the top, middle class in the middle and lower class at the bottom.
He would typically be considered as an accountant to be in the middle class. So what would happen if in Ian's lifetime he got a series of promotions and ended up as the CEO of this international accounting firm. End up making an absolute boatload of money. And actually joined the upper class.
He would actually move up, in terms of his social standing. What about on the flip side? What if he had some real struggles at the company, got fired and ended up in a really poorly paid job. Maybe in a manual job, maybe as a factory worker. He would perhaps move down.
In his life time he would perhaps join the working class or the lower class. So one of the important things to consider here is what's happening to Ian it's happening to him in his life time, in his own life time. Whether he goes up or down the change in social mobility that he's experiencing is one that's affecting him in his own generation in his own life time.
And this is something that we call "intragenerational mobility". And the important thing with intragenerational mobility is that it's affecting Ian in his life time. Now there's another concept I want to introduce you to. And that concept is a little bit different.
And that concept is actually called "intergenerational mobility". And just like intragenerational mobility these concepts are both really descibing types of social mobility. Particularly social mobility up or down the social hierarchy. Now what's different about intergenerational mobility is that we really need to consider Ian's parents.
Because intergenerational mobility actually considers them in addition to him. Instead of just looking at what is happening to him we have to really consider where they stand on the social ladder. So let's have a look at them. So if they were manual workers, laborers, working class or lower class.
And then Ian ended up being a CEO, for example, in the upper class. We would see that across generations there was a change in their social group from a lower class to upper class. So really one of the key concepts between both of these is that when we consider intragenerational mobility we are considering social mobility change in a person's own life time.
While when we consider intergenerational mobility we are considering social mobility changes across generations.
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