Intergenerational Mobility in a Context of Socio-institutional Change

Intergenerational Mobility in a Context of Socio-institutional Change: The Case of Socialist China This paper offers an analysis of the intergenerational mobility among men in state socialist China, utilizing a data set collected in the late 1980s. Three hypotheses are set out to test against the Chinese data. They are respectively developed on the basis of the assumption about the logic of industrialism, the distinctive mobility patterns found in state socialist societies, and the change in the relative importance of different employment status positions in socialist China. In applying log-multiplicative association and hybrid models to the data, we find that significant changes in social fluidity largely have occurred during China's transition to a more market-oriented economy. Notably, our preferred model shows that such changes are associated with the rising importance of employer/self-employed positions in the economy which in turn forms an essential context for intergenerational status or resources transmission. In a broad sociological sense, our finding can be taken to mean that the socio-institutional structures central to a society intermingle with the intergenerational mobility so much so that detailed patterns of mobility can only be revealed if changes in these structures are taken into consideration.