Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain andIreland in the Nineteenth and Early TwentiethCenturies

Kenneth Prandy and Wendy BotteroSchool of Social Sciences Department of SociologyUniversity of Cardiff University of Southampton

abstract This article presents some preliminary results from a historical study of social

mobility in Britain and Ireland, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The

study is marked by a unique combination of features: (1) it follows families for up to five

generations, through both maternal and paternal lines; (2) it uses a continuous measure of

social position, rather than class categories; (3) this measure is derived from data on social

interaction – correspondence analyses of cross-tabulations of the occupations for

marriages taking place in the periods 1777–1866 and 1867–1913; (4) each individual’s social

position is summarised by a work-life trajectory, represented by his social location at ages

20 and 50. The analyses are based on twelve ten-year birth cohorts from 1790–99 to

1900–09. The results indicate a remarkable degree of stability of social processes of

reproduction throughout this period, although there is an extremely slow shift towards a

weakening of family influence. This process appears to have accelerated for those born in

the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a period of both educational reform and major

change in Britain’s industrial organisation.

keywords credentialism, industrialisation, occupation, social mobility, social

reproduction

This paper reports on a study into social reproduction and mobility in

Britain and Ireland during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries, looking at ten-year birth cohorts of men born between the years 1790 and

1909. The individuals in our study are separated not merely by time but also by

dramatic transformations in the society in which they experienced their lives. The

successive cohorts witnessed the decline of agriculture, the rise of large-scale factory

production and white-collar bureaucracy, the rise of mass education and merito-

cratic selection procedures, and the emergence of the ‘middle classes’ and service

economy (ó Gráda 1994; Wrigley 1986; Anderson 1977; Crossick 1977; Lee 1994; Savage

et al. 1992). We can see the effect of these developments in the lives of our sample, yet

our overall conclusion is that the influence of family position on the subsequent

careers of these individuals declines only slightly.

Sociology Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 265–281. Printed in the United Kingdom © 2000 BSA Publications Limited

265

The Analysis of Social Mobility

Research into social mobility reflects a concern with the transmission and

reproduction of patterns of advantage and disadvantage over time. There are two

components to this: inter-generational mobility, the extent to which family social

position is handed on to subsequent generations; and intra-generational mobility,

the extent to which individuals experience a change in their social situation over the

course of their lives. We think it is important, in looking at processes of social

reproduction, to try to move away from dependence on an occupation at specific

points in time and to try and encompass the idea of an individual trajectory, that is to

say some means of representing the whole of an individual’s career. Many historical

studies of social mobility take the occupation of the son and the father (and/or

father-in-law) at the time of the former’s marriage; modern studies typically

consider the individual’s first and current occupations as compared with father’s

current occupation and that (typically) at the time the individual left school. Yet it is

not at all clear how far these choices of particular points in people’s lives affect the

results.1 Single occupations, or even two occupations considered singly, are unlikely

to be adequate indicators of social position, because they suffer from several possible

sources of error. There are powerful arguments for taking as the unit of stratification,

not the particular occupation that an individual holds at a point in time, but the

series of jobs, the trajectory, into which that one job fits (or may not fit) (Stewart et al.

1980; Lynch 1998). In that sense, therefore, intra-generational reproduction would

have to be an essential aspect of any comparison between generations.

The idea of considering individuals’ work-life trajectories is an extension of the

idea that their social location cannot adequately be captured by a ‘snapshot’ picture

at a point in time. Their past experience and their anticipated future, particularly

when based on understandings of normal processes, is an essential part of indivi-

duals’ conceptions of themselves, their social identity and consequent behaviour. In

comparing the occupations of two individuals at different points in time, therefore,

we also have to consider the network of social relationships – the influence of past

history and future prospects – in which occupations are embedded and which give

them influence and meaning. Focusing on work life trajectory is one aspect of a social

interaction approach to stratification. Social class categorisations, which tend to

abstract the individual from his or her social relationships and to classify them solely

in terms of current economic location, cannot readily accommodate such an

approach. By contrast, the approach on which our research is based is easily extended

in this way, because it depends upon the analysis of actual patterns of social inter-

action. Such interaction depends upon similarities of lifestyle, related to material

and social advantage. This approach is a historical extension of the Cambridge Scale

(Stewart et al. 1980; Prandy 1990) and uses occupations taken from marriage records

to develop an index of hierarchical social order. The starting assumption is that close

266 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

social relationships (such as those involved in marriage) typically occur in situations

of social similarity. We therefore use the occupations of families engaging in inter-

marriage as an indicator of patterns of relative social closeness and distance.

The data that will be presented later are based on historical versions of the scale

that were developed using occupational information collected at marriage for two

periods, 1777–1866 and 1867–1913. Typically, the information includes the occupa-

tions of the groom, his father and his father-in-law (it may also include the

occupation of the bride, but this is, unfortunately, less common). The patterns of

intermarriage between occupational groups were used to determine the degree of

social similarity and dissimilarity between them and from these to investigate the

existence of clear orderings of occupations. For the two periods that we are dealing

with, it is possible to demonstrate the existence of an underlying dimension that can

be identified as a meaningful social order or hierarchy (Prandy and Bottero 1998).

Using the occupational scale scores enables us to develop the idea of an employment

trajectory when looking at the careers of our sample. Our present means of

attempting to encompass the idea of trajectory is relatively simple, but we believe it to

be a move in the right direction. The first step in developing a measure of trajectory

for each individual is to create a summary indicator of changing social location. The

most suitable means of doing this is through a regression analysis (Matthews et al.

1990). For every individual we can plot the value of each recorded occupation in their

career history on the Cambridge Scale against their age at the time and determine the

best-fitting straight line through all of these points (Prandy and Bottero 2000). The

great advantage of this procedure is not simply that it provides a convenient

summary; it also prevents undue weight being given to observations that may be out

of line. This can arise, for example, through errors in the recording and coding of

occupations. It can also arise in the normal process of careers, where an individual

may be required to work in an initial lowly position as part of a routine progression to

a more elevated situation (working as a ‘tea boy’ in an office, for example). The

regression line thus gives a sense of the overall career trajectory.

Once the regression line has been determined it is possible to calculate the

expected Cambridge Scale score for the individual at any age. So, in making com-

parisons between individuals and across generations we do not have to rely on the

semi-arbitrary nature of the information that is actually available, but can choose

convenient points in a consistent manner across all cases. The second step, then, is to

provide estimates of the individual’s social location at what could reasonably be

regarded, for most men, as the two extremes of the working life. For this purpose we

have settled on the ages of 20 and 50. The earlier age represents pretty well the stage in

the working life when most men will be at or close to the point at which they take on

their first adult occupation. This avoids the pitfalls of taking ‘first job’ which,

particularly for a historical sample with irregular employment information, are

likely to be highly varied including both adult and ‘boy’s’ jobs. The latter age, 50, is at,

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 267

or close to, a ‘peak’ position. Most men will have attained their highest (or lowest)

level by this time and will not yet be seriously affected by career decline or the onset

of ‘semi-retirement’ jobs.

Data

Historical studies of social mobility in Britain have typically been based on

the analysis of marriage records drawn from selected parishes in particular years.

The research reported here is based on a very different method of analysis: using

family histories to generate a national sample covering an extended time period. The

3,200 respondents who provide the data for the study are drawn from members of

family history societies in Britain and Ireland. Each respondent has completed a set

of forms asking for information that they have on the occupations of their direct

ancestors on both maternal and paternal lines going back five generations beyond

their own. Not all forms are complete, yet the doubling up of numbers of ancestors at

each generation means that we have many more cases from earlier generations than

we do for the present one.

For each ancestor we asked for the information that is normally available from

civil registration records – at marriage, the birth and then marriage of their child,

and at death – as well as any other information derived from censuses, trade direc-

tories, land registers and other sources.2 The dataset on which our analysis is based is

particularly useful as a means of looking at the combination of inter- and intra-

generational aspects, as it represents a network of 80,000 individuals linked by close

family, going back five generations (into the late eighteenth century), with occupa-

tional information on most of those individuals. One great advantage is that all those

in our dataset have completed their working lives.We have therefore been able to take

their entire careers (or at least as far as they have been identified in the historical

record) into account when constructing our employment trajectory summaries. As

the basis of these trajectories, we have information on occupations at various points

in the individuals’ lives, with an average of 2.5 recorded occupations per person (3.8

recorded occupations for the men). Female jobs are under-recorded in the historical

record (Higgs 1987), which creates additional difficulties in measuring the mobility

experience of women. We have developed a measure of female occupational

experience (Bottero and Prandy 1998), which we intend to include in later analyses of

social reproduction, but for the purposes of the present discussion we look only at

the men in our sample.

Of the 80,000 individuals in the sample about whom we have occupational

information, 42,675 are men born in the period 1790–1909, the period to which we

have restricted our analysis. Of these men, we have information about the occupa-

tional histories of their fathers in 29,799 cases (i.e. 29,799 father–son pairs). We have

also looked at the occupational history of the individual’s father-in-law as well, to

268 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

examine the influence of relationships by marriage as well as by birth on the repro-

duction of social position. The analysis in this paper has therefore been conducted

on 25,144 family ‘units’ (comprising men, their fathers and their fathers-in-law, all

with occupational information).

Of course, we have to consider possible biases in a sample that is generated by

drawing on family historians’ research on their ancestors. Amateur family historians

are not a representative cross-section of the population. As a group, they are more

likely to be middle-class, better educated and older. Changes in the occupational

structure mean that a contemporary middle-class sample is very likely to have

plebeian ancestors, and this likelihood increases with each generation back. This is

certainly the case for our sample. So it may be that our research tells us more about

mobility into the middle classes, and misses out on those lower order groups whose

children have not moved into the middle ranks. This would suggest that our sample

over-estimates rather than under-estimates mobility and, conversely, under-

estimates the degree of stability. That is, as the cohorts of the sample become increas-

ingly skewed towards middle-order groups over time, this increases the probability

that their ancestors in the sample will be from lower-order groups, and thus increases

the probability of finding social movement rather than stability.

In conducting family tree research, it is often easier to trace individuals who have

stayed put both socially and geographically. It is difficult to trace individuals who

have physically moved great distances or settled in large conurbations. To the extent

that geographical mobility is bound up with social mobility we are likely to under-

estimate social movement. There may be a similar bias towards locating individuals

who have stayed put socially, since direct inheritance – of occupation, premises or of

land – may make ancestors more traceable. This is likely to be more of an issue for the

earliest period covered in our sample (those born before 1810), when tracing

ancestors becomes particularly difficult. The occupational records of the earliest

cohorts (and certainly their fathers and fathers-in-law) occur before the advent of

civil registration in 1837 in England and Wales (and individual occupational returns

in the census in 1841), so individuals with occupations who have been traced for this

period could be unusually privileged or visible in the historical record. The earliest

cohorts should, therefore, be regarded with some caution.

We have compared our sample distribution with the census figures for two years

1861 and 1911, using the largest occupational groupings, to give some general sense of

any occupational biases in our study. The comparisons indicate that, in both years,

our sample does have proportionately more farmers, government workers, inn-

keepers and professionals, and fewer mine and textile workers than the overall

population. This confirms our suspicions about the relative ‘visibility’ of certain

occupational groups in the historical record, and indicates that our sample is

relatively more ‘middle class’. The discrepancy is also worse in the later census year,

again confirming our suspicion that our sample gets less representative the nearer we

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 269

get to the present day. Although the discrepancies mean that our figures should

obviously be treated with some caution, it is also clear that our sample is still broadly

representative and the overall occupational distribution is quite close to the census

figures.

A final, useful comparison is of our last birth cohort with the first cohort of the

Oxford Social Mobility study (Goldthorpe 1980), using Cambridge Scale scores. By

giving the occupations of the Oxford sample modern scores3 we can compare the

distributions of the two samples. In fact there is a remarkable similarity between the

two distributions, suggesting that even as recently as the 1900–09 birth cohort our

respondents are much more representative than might have been expected.

The use of a scale of occupations, rather than a nominal class schema or even a

limited number of ordered class groupings, has consequences for the form of

analysis that we adopt. The convention in social mobility analysis has been to use a

class schema and log-linear modelling (see, for example, Erikson and Goldthorpe

1992). We are critical of these approaches, because of our dissatisfaction partly with

the idea of class groupings (Prandy and Bottero 1995; Prandy and Blackburn 1997)

and partly with the assumptions of the techniques being used (Blackburn and

Prandy 1997) – two aspects which we believe are closely linked. In their place we are

able to use regression techniques that, in our view, lend themselves much more

readily to the analysis of causal structures. Certain issues that loom quite large in log-

linear analysis are less of a problem. For example, the problem of structural versus

exchange mobility and the associated idea of relative mobility chances (Erikson and

Goldthorpe 1992) is largely a consequence of structural changes affecting the relative

size of different class groupings. The kind of question to which our analyses are

addressed – such as how much of the variation in son’s social position is attributable

to differences in father’s social position – are not affected to the same extent.

Mobility and Social Reproduction

Figure 1 is a path diagram4 using our summary information on employment

trajectories, which provides a means of presenting, in compact form, the four major

processes involved in social reproduction. They are: (1) the influence of the father’s

social position on the starting, or early, position of his son (age 20); (2) the extent to

which the son’s social position is related to the social position of his wife, as

represented by the ‘peak’social position of his father-in-law (age 50); (3) the degree of

life-time, intra-generational movement, as indicated by the direct effect of the son’s

early on his ‘peak’ position; and (4) the continuing effects, operating independently

of these earlier influences, on the son’s position from those of the previous genera-

tion, both from his father and from his father-in-law.

The results presented are those for our entire sample of 25,144 men (birth cohorts

1790–1909) about whom we also have linked occupational information on their

270 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

fathers and fathers-in-law. For the sake of completeness, the diagram also includes

the relationship between the father’s positions at 20 and 50, which is a strong one,

but, in the early cohorts particularly, this is partly because in some cases the estimates

are based on a limited number of occupations. The first influences of interest are

those that operate from these two measures of the father’s position on that of the son

at the age of 20. Thirty years is in many cases the age difference between fathers and

sons, so for the majority the father’s position at 50 will be at roughly the same point in

time as that of the son at 20. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the strongest

influence at this point comes from the father’s social position at age 50 (p�0.49).

What is interesting, though, is the quite strong, secondary, influence from the father’s

social position at age 20 (p�0.16). Father’s position at age 20 continues to influence

son’s location in addition to the father’s effect at age 50, which indicates that current

location never fully captures the social circumstances of individuals, bound as they

are by past and future experiences. Clearly, the individual’s current social position

never tells the whole story, which is why it is necessary to have a measure that is based

on a lifetime trajectory. People’s social location does not simply reflect their current

experience. Their past, and even their anticipated future, experience also plays a

critical part.

We would argue there are three main reasons why the father’s early experience

continues to affect not only his own position, but also that of his son. First, it reflects

the situation in which the son will have been brought up. A father who has

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 271

Figure 1Social reproduction of family position for those born 1790–1909

Fatherage 20

Father-in-

law age 50

Fatherage 50

Sonage 20

Sonage 50

Res Res

Res

Res

0.10

0.86

0.16

0.17

0.37

0.10

0.09

0.68

0.73 0.40

0.65

0.33

0.49

experienced upward movement may nevertheless have had fewer resources,

material, social or cultural, to expend on the son’s upbringing; conversely, one who

has moved down may have been able at an earlier time to have transmitted valuable

resources to the son. The significance of trajectory is clearly seen here. Secondly,

there is inevitably a degree of approximation about the individual’s social location.

For example, the father may now be a shopkeeper or own a small business, but it is

likely that those who have moved up into such positions will be amongst the less

advantaged members of the occupational group, and vice versa. In this case, then, the

effect from the father’s early position is actually reflecting variation within the

current occupational group.

There is a third reason for the influence which may well have to do with the

nature of social reproduction. As we have argued, what is significant is not the

occupation at a single point in time, nor the succession of particular occupations, it

is the whole work-life trajectory. If it is trajectories that are being reproduced, then

we would expect the early part of the son’s trajectory to be related to the early part of

the father’s.

The second major influence that is represented in the diagram is that of the

family into which the individual marries. It is important to appreciate that social

reproduction is not simply a process of transmission through the male line.

Reproduction involves the creation of a new family, and in this new family it is as

much the position of the wife’s family of origin that is being reproduced as that of the

husband’s. The initial aspect of this process is, of course, the selection of a marriage

partner. We have made this in one sense central to our whole analysis of social

reproduction, because we have used patterns of intermarriage as the basis for the

creation of a scale of occupations. This is only possible because there is a relatively

strong relationship between the social positions of the two families that are being

brought together.5

In the path diagram this is summarised in the set of influences that act upon the

social position of the father-in-law at age 50. Of course, this should not be seen as a

causal influence in the sense that a father-in-law exists whose position is determined

by his son-in-law and the latter’s father. It is rather that the characteristics of these

last two determine the choice of the former. Put simply, the social location of the

groom’s family is important in determining at what social level the groom will be

able to find a bride (and vice versa). As we might expect, the social position of the

groom himself has the major effect (p�0.37), but there are important additional

influences from his father. As with the son’s own position at age 20, these influences

from the father come not only from his more recent position (p�0.17), but also from

his early one (p�0.10). The reasons for this are similar to those that operated in the

case of the son’s early position, although in this case we can also add the fact that the

patterns of social interaction will reflect the trajectory as well as current situation.

That is to say, the social origins of the son and his early upbringing are likely to have a

272 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

continuing influence on the style of life that is led, on residence and on the choice of

those with whom social interaction takes place.

The third process summarised in the diagram is that of intra-generational move-

ment – the individual’s social trajectory. This is represented very simply by the

influence running from his early, age 20, social position to his peak, age 50, position

(p�0.68). In other words, we can see the extent of stability or change in social

location. However, in considering these, it is also necessary to take account of the

inter-generational processes that continue to operate. It is clear that the process is not

one in which the individual is socially placed at an initial point of a trajectory, after

which all such influence ceases. The peak positions of both the father (p�0.09) and

the father-in-law (p�0.10) continue to have an influence on the peak position of the

son. The continuing influence of the father (above and beyond his influence on his

son’s early social position) is likely to reflect, again, the dynamic element of the son’s

career that has not been captured in his position at age 20. Also, of course, there are

the additional aspects of advantage that fathers and fathers-in-law can bestow as the

groom ages and comes into various social and material inheritances.

Patterns of Social Reproduction over Time

In order to assess the extent of any changes over time it is necessary to go

beyond the simple path diagram shown in Figure 1 and attempt to model the

structures for the twelve ten-year birth cohorts (from 1790–99 to 1900–09). There is

continuing debate over the assessment of these kinds of structural equation models

(Bollen and Long 1993). For example, we tested a model in which the (un-

standardised) regression weights were constrained to be equal across all twelve

cohorts and it is not entirely clear that such a model should be rejected.6 In other

words, on one reading the data could support the argument that there had been no

change over a period of 120 years and more in the pattern of family influences on

attainment processes. However, examination of the individual cohorts suggests that

there is a consistency about the pattern of deviations by cohort from the overall

model. Differences are not random, they show a constant linear trend, with a general

weakening of relationships for the latest cohorts.

There is a clear pattern that reveals itself particularly in the two key areas of the

social transmission from the father to the son in his early career position and of

social reproduction through family formation, as shown by the determinants of the

father-in-law’s position. The picture here is essentially one of considerable stability

through most of the nineteenth century, with perhaps the hint of a relative loosening

of family influence on individual social position from 1850, and then a clear change as

we move to the last three cohorts, those born between 1880 and 1909. Comparing the

three cohorts at the beginning with the three at the end shows that the influence of

father’s position on his son’s early career has fallen from 42–43 per cent, but still

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 273

explains fully 29–30 per cent of the variation. Similarly, the influences from the

groom’s side of the family to that of the bride has fallen from a high level of 34 per

cent, but is still quite substantial at 26 per cent.

In order to try to model these trends we have tried various cut-off points that

divide the twelve birth cohorts into two larger groups. In these models the values of

the regression coefficients were held constant within each group, but allowed to vary

between groups.7 There were two equally parsimonious and equally acceptable

models: one dividing those born prior to and those born in or after 1870, and the

other with 1880 as the cut-off year. Results for the latter are shown in Table 1. The

goodness-of-fit statistics for this model are highly significant.8 Although the general

structure of causal influences stays remarkably constant, there is a clear decline in

two important coefficients: as we might anticipate from the preceding discussion,

they are the influence on the son’s position at age 20 from that of the father at age 50

and that from the son’s position to that of his father-in-law. There is some, but much

less marked, reduction in the influence from the son’s position at age 20 to that at age

50; in other words a small increase in intra-generational mobility.

The loosening of the father’s influence on son’s early position that occurs most

markedly for the 1870 or 1880 birth cohorts coincides with the increasing importance

of both white-collar employment and mass education. This suggests that there may

have been both an improvement in educational opportunities and an opening up of

new career paths. However, the fact that the relationship to the father-in-law also

weakens indicates that there may also be other factors at work. The effect of greater

educational provision might be to loosen the link between the father’s position and

the son’s starting position, but one would expect the latter to be reflected in

relationships of marriage. One possibility, that we cannot at present investigate, is

that – since, after all, it is a bride that is chosen, not her father – there is a similar

weakening in the link between the occupations of fathers and daughters.

274 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

Table 1Comparison of the Regression Weights for Those Born 1790–1879 and 1880–1909

Coefficient from: To: 1790–1879 1880–1909

Father aged 20 Father aged 50 0.77–0.94* 0.74–0.81*

Son aged 20 0.16 0.13

Father-in-law aged 50 0.09 0.10

Father aged 50 Son aged 20 0.47 0.39

Father-in-law aged 50 0.17 0.18

Son aged 50 0.08 0.09

Son aged 20 Father-in-law aged 50 0.40 0.33

Son aged 50 0.67 0.64

Father-in-law aged 50 Son aged 50 0.09 0.11

* This coefficient was allowed to vary between cohorts (see Note 7).

Industrialisation, Social Mobility and the Family

The conventional assumption for many years amongst sociologists was that

with industrialisation society became more ‘open’ and opportunities for mobility

increased. There are different models of this process. The convergence theorists

argued that class-based differences in life chances would be eroded as meritocratic

and universalistic principles develop with industrialism (Kerr et al. 1960; Blau and

Duncan 1967). A variant model argued for a threshold or ‘take-off ’ effect, with the

most fundamental changes in mobility chances occurring at the very onset of

industrialisation (Lipset and Zetterberg 1956). It has also been argued that similar

rates of mobility can be observed in all industrial societies once a certain degree of

economic development has been reached, and this can also be seen as a ‘take-off ’

model (Lipset and Bendix 1959; Featherman, Jones and Hauser 1975). In many of

these models, there is the clear assumption of a pre-industrial society with low social

mobility and rigid social barriers. The classical sociological account of the transition

to modernity and to a market society, with a move from particularism to univer-

salism, from tradition to rationality, and from status to contract, also seems to

underpin many of the accounts.

Gradualist, convergence theory has been widely criticised by both sociologists

and historians. A number of sociological studies, using class-based approaches,

suggest that relative rates of mobility are surprisingly constant both cross-nationally

and across time (Goldthorpe 1980; Erickson and Goldthorpe 1992). There is little

evidence on rates of mobility in early modern Europe, but what does exist does not

support the view of a rigid pre-industrial society with low and stable rates of

mobility. In a review of the historical evidence of mobility patterns during indus-

trialisation, Kaelble concluded that the first stages of industrial capitalism did not

increase mobility and, if anything, may have impeded it. He suggests that the

industrial revolution saw only modest changes in mobility, and that it was only when

‘organised capitalism’ emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century, when

economic concentration accelerated and state intervention increased, that mobility

chances improved (Kaelble 1981, 1985). We might see this as another ‘threshold’

model, but with economic ‘take-off ’ placed much later, with the advent of corporate,

large-scale capitalism and the rise of the state.

This revisionist model of stability in mobility patterns for much of the nine-

teenth century coincides with revisionism in the account of the industrial revolution

itself. Once seen as a dramatic process of upheaval, the consensus amongst social and

economic historians now is that the industrial ‘revolution’ was a piecemeal and

uneven process drawn out over an extended period. In this account the process of

change is slow, with initial developments (for example, the increasingly mercantile

nature of agriculture) identified early in the eighteenth century and before, whilst

‘traditional’ working practices and small-scale operations persisted and even

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 275

flourished throughout much of the nineteenth century (Berg 1994; Crafts 1994; Joyce

1990; Samuel 1977; Wrigley 1986; Elbaum and Lazonick 1986). We can place the

emergence of ‘modern’ forms of work organisation (such as the rise of internally

stratified bureaucratic firms, large automated factories, or the development of

managerial, professional and white-collar work) as characteristic patterns of

employment only late in the nineteenth century. It has been argued that this process

was even further delayed in the British case, as the institutions of corporate

capitalism developed relatively late in the British economy in comparison to the

United States, Germany or Japan (Elbaum and Lazonick 1986; Chandler 1990).

Our study indicates that the relationship between fathers’ and sons’ social

position did weaken from the 1870s on, suggesting that ‘family influence’ declined in

the face of more credentialist and bureaucratic principles. This is supported by our

finding that the influence of early career position on subsequent ‘peak’ career

position also strengthened. Initial starts into the labour market seem to have become

more important – which might indicate the increasing importance of educational

qualifications and career ladders. At the same time, however, our data reveal that the

decline in family influence seems to have been surprisingly modest, even after the

1870s. Our overall conclusion then, is that, even in the face of the developments of

‘organised capitalism’ – the rise of credentialism and bureaucracy, white-collar work

and the service sector, mass education and the state – that despite all this family

influence on social position has been remarkably stable and enduring.

Conclusion

The measurement of ‘mobility’ is essentially the investigation of the patterns

of relationships which emerge out of marriage and parenting. The processes which

give rise to these patterns are both very simple, because they are based in routine

social relations – of association, contiguity, friendship, love and marriage – and also

enormously complex and varied. The social reproduction of hierarchy involves the

transmission of position and advantage from generation to generation. Yet the

ability of parents to hand down social advantages to their children obviously

depends on the changing nature of the ‘currency’ of advantage and position. The

period investigated in our study witnessed significant shifts in that currency – the

decline in the importance of agriculture, landed property and ‘family’ firms; the rise

of education, bureaucratic careers, white-collar employment and credentialism. Yet

family influence on social position has remained remarkably buoyant in the face of

these changes. Young men have continued to find wives from families close to their

own social level, and whose social position corresponds well to their own future

career. Children have continued to find their own place in the world, but a position

closely associated with that of their parents.

This would indicate that the ability of families to adapt to changing circum-

276 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

stances and to draw upon a variety of social and material resources is remarkably

successful. It also suggests that the various currencies of social advantage were readily

convertible for the families in our sample. We can see a loosening of family influence

in the last quarter of the nineteenth century which, we must assume, is associated

with the development of mass education and credentialist white-collar employment

at that time. However, the influence of family position on careers stubbornly persists,

so families were clearly adept both in converting social resources into educational

credit, and in continuing to find avenues additional to education to maintain their

social position. Given the well-known impact of family position on educational

success, it is perhaps not surprising that families have been able to sustain processes

of social inheritance even in the face of increasing credentialism. The only other

large-scale study of mobility in nineteenth-century Britain (Miles 1993) used a social

class approach, but its conclusions are not inconsistent with our own. Miles argues

that the displacement of ‘disorderly’ careers by linear and structured bureaucratic

hierarchies may have led to greater ‘openness’ in society. However, our data suggest

that the significant weakening of the relationship between early and later social

position and the decline in parental influence on early attainment appears to have

been a one-off event, rather than a move to new situation of increasing openness.

Family influence over the attainment of educational resources seems subsequently to

have established itself.

The modern era is generally conceived in terms of the emergence of a market for

labour and the rise of more meritocratic and credentialist principles of selection and

advancement. This is frequently characterised as the displacement of ascriptive

principles by those based on individualism and achievement, with a consequent

increase in openness. This effect is seen as being strengthened by constant techno-

logical change and the ensuing effects on the structure of occupations and the

creation of new opportunities. Our results suggest that British society has been

marked by a high level of stability in the level of social mobility. The first phase of

industrialisation in Britain, if indeed this can be determined with any degree of

exactitude, occurred before the start of the period that our research covers and very

little is known of patterns of social mobility before and during this phase.9 As

industrialisation proceeded throughout the nineteenth century, the rate of increase

in openness was, at best, glacial. It seems equally likely, taking our results together

with those of Glass (1954)10 and the Oxford Mobility Study (Goldthorpe 1980), that

the same is true for much of the twentieth century.

However, our results do suggest a period in which there was a clear shift in the

pattern of social reproduction. The period prior to the turn of the century was one in

which the British economy had to adjust to the consequences of the more advanced

industrialisation in other countries, the United States and Germany in particular

(Hobsbawm 1984). The associated technological and organisational change was

accompanied by political developments, the most relevant being the introduction of

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 277

universal (male) suffrage and of a compulsory, free education system. If this period

should properly be identified as the one in which Britain became a truly modern,

industrial society, then our evidence supports Erikson and Goldthorpe’s (1992)

arguments about the essentially one-off nature of the change in mobility patterns

with industrialisation. Equally, though it is extremely difficult to separate the two,

the evidence could be seen as lending support to their arguments about the efficacy

of determined political action, in this case the provision of universal education.

It is important that, in recognising the importance of family influence, we do

not exaggerate it. Familial social position was not straightforwardly inherited by

succeeding generations even at the beginning of the nineteenth century. However,

our data show that there has been only a slight decline in family influence, which

indicates that British society at the beginning of the nineteenth century was relatively

more ‘open’, and that of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century more ‘closed’,

than has previously been supposed. The emergence of a ‘market’ for labour and the

‘revolutionary’ nature of modernity must be seriously questioned, because the

hierarchy of the social order has been remarkably robust and enduring in the face of

these apparent changes. Much more serious attention must be given, both to the

continuity in patterns of social reproduction over time, and to the processes by

which the transmission of advantage and disadvantage has been achieved.

acknowledgementThe authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research

Council in funding the work reported in this article under awards R000235147 (The Family,

Occupation and Social Stratification: 1840 to the Present) and R000221729 (The Family,

Occupation and Social Stratification in Scotland and Ireland).

notes1. Delger and Kok (1998) demonstrate that the use of marriage certificates has the effect of

overestimating the extent of downward mobility.

2. There is a possible question mark about the accuracy of the research information collected

by what are essentially amateur family historians investigating their own genealogies.

Family histories provide an extremely rich source of information for looking at issues of

social mobility and reproduction, but they have been largely neglected until now. It would

be prohibitively expensive to try to collect such data on a large scale independently, and it is

precisely the use of this method which makes such a project feasible. The individuals who

took part in our study were (of necessity, given the amount of information that we

requested from them) clearly committed and very serious ‘amateurs’ who had collected

detailed profiles of each ancestor drawing on a wide variety of official and non-official

sources (mainly civil registration and censuses), which we required them to list. Although it

would be impossible to verify the information thus collected, we believe that the great

majority of the data thus produced are of a very high quality. We have made basic checks of

the internal consistency of the data reported (for example, checking that the birth and

death dates of successive generations tally) and have been impressed with the overall level

of accuracy. However, as with any dataset, a level of caution must be used in interpreting

the results that the methodology has generated.

278 kenneth prandy and wendy bottero

3. We took the trajectory score at age 50 of the last birth cohort of our sample (1900–09). See

Prandy and Bottero (1998) for a fuller discussion of the construction of scale scores.

4. The variables are all in the same metric and their standard deviations are very similar. The

unstandardised coefficients, therefore, only differ very slightly from the standardised ones.

5. For a related discussion of the relationship between, in his terms, occupational mobility

and occupational endogamy, see Mitch (1993).

6. The comparative fit index (CFI), the goodness of fit index (GFI), both with a value of 0.99,

and the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), at 0.014 and with a PCLOSE

value of 1.00, are all within normally acceptable limits. Only the value of χ2, 574.667 with 111

degrees of freedom, suggests that the fit may not be wholly adequate.

7. In order to prevent the relationship between the occupational position of the father at age

20 and age 50 affecting the fit of the model – as was pointed out earlier in the text, this is

stronger in the earliest periods for artefactual reasons – this parameter was not

constrained.

8. The value of χ2 for the 1790–1879/1880–1909 model is a little less than that for the

1790–1869/1870–1909 model, but the difference is not statistically significant. The goodness

of fit statistics for the former model are: GFI�0.996; CFI�0.998; RMSEA�0.008

(PCLOSE�1.000); χ2�228.538 (df�92). Comparison with the values reported in note 6

suggests that this present model is to be preferred.

9. See, however, Stone and Stone (1984) and Earle (1989).

10. It is clear from the critique by Payne (1987) that the results of this study have to be treated

with considerable caution, however.

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Biographical note: KENNETH PRANDY is Professorial Fellow in the School of Social Sciences,

Cardiff University. His major research interest is in social stratification. In addition to the

research reported in the present article he is engaged in a major international comparative

study of social interaction-based measures of social distance and stratification.

WENDY BOTTERO is a Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Southampton. Her research

interests are in the area of hierarchy and inequality. She is also a joint investigator with Kenneth

Prandy in the international project on social interaction-based measures of social distance and

stratification.

Address: Prandy, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, Glamorgan Building, King Edward

VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT; Bottero, Department of Sociology, University of Southampton,

Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ.

Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland 281