Social Mobility Table
Also known as: mobility table, intergenerational mobility table, origin-destination table, transition table analysis
A social mobility table is a cross-classification of individuals by their social origin (typically a parent's class or occupation) and their own destination class, forming the empirical foundation of intergenerational mobility research. Analyzing it separates how much people move between classes, distinguishes movement forced by changing class sizes from genuine exchange, and isolates the underlying origin–destination association that measures the openness of a society.
Key highlights
- Provides the standard, internationally comparable framework for categorical intergenerational mobility.
- Distinguishes structural (marginal-driven) from exchange (circulation) mobility, clarifying what 'more mobility' means.
- Odds-ratio focus yields measures of relative mobility that are invariant to changing class sizes.
- Serves as the data structure on which powerful log-linear and association models are built.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use mobility-table analysis when you have categorical origin and destination data (class, occupational grouping, education) and want to characterize intergenerational movement, compare openness across countries or cohorts, or test specific hypotheses about which origin–destination associations are strong. It is the natural framework when both variables are categorical and the question is about relative rather than absolute positions. It is not appropriate when origin or destination is continuous (use intergenerational elasticity), when cells are too sparse for stable estimates, or when the fine structure of the association requires the formal log-linear and association models that build on the table rather than the descriptive indices alone.
Strengths & limitations
- Provides the standard, internationally comparable framework for categorical intergenerational mobility.
- Distinguishes structural (marginal-driven) from exchange (circulation) mobility, clarifying what 'more mobility' means.
- Odds-ratio focus yields measures of relative mobility that are invariant to changing class sizes.
- Serves as the data structure on which powerful log-linear and association models are built.
- Requires categorical class schemes whose boundaries are debated and affect every conclusion.
- Descriptive indices like total mobility confound structural and exchange components unless explicitly decomposed.
- Sparse cells in detailed class schemes destabilize estimates and odds ratios.
- A two-way origin–destination table omits mediators such as education unless extended to higher-dimensional tables.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
What is the difference between absolute and relative mobility?
Absolute mobility is the observed amount of movement between classes, including movement forced by changes in the sizes of classes across generations (structural mobility). Relative mobility, captured by odds ratios, describes the competition between people of different origins for the same destinations independent of how class sizes changed. Two societies can have very different absolute mobility yet identical relative mobility, which is why sociologists emphasize the latter when assessing openness.
Why are odds ratios central to mobility analysis?
Odds ratios formed from the table's cells are invariant to the marginal (origin and destination) distributions. This means they isolate the genuine origin–destination association — how strongly where you start binds where you end up — from the mechanical effects of a changing class structure. Log-linear and association models parameterize exactly these odds ratios.
How is structural mobility distinguished from exchange mobility?
Structural (forced) mobility is the minimum movement required by the difference between the origin and destination marginal distributions: if the destination structure has more high-status slots than the origin structure, some upward movement is unavoidable. Exchange (circulation) mobility is the additional, reciprocal movement that would occur even if the marginals were identical, and it reflects fluidity rather than structural change.
Sources
- 1.Hauser, R. M. (1978). A structural model of the mobility table. Social Forces, 56(3), 919–953.
- 2.Hout, M. (1983). Mobility Tables. Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-031. Sage.ISBN 978-0-8039-2056-9
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Social Mobility Table. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/sociology/social-mobility-table