On Social Mobility: the Other Side of the Coin. A quantitative study on how intergenerational social mobility direction affects satisfaction with democracy in European countries

Abstract

High intergenerational social mobility is by scholars depicted as something good. However, high intergenerational social mobility not only encompasses mobility upward but also mobility downward. It has been found by previous scholars that mobility direction affects political distrust, nonetheless there is still little research on the adverse political outcomes of intergenerational social mobility direction. This thesis aims to partly fill this gap by contrasting individuals experiencing upward mobility with individuals experiencing mobility downward. Asymmetry in mobility direction is expected to affect satisfaction with democracy; individuals experiencing mobility upward will be more satisfied because they ascribe their mobility to individual efforts, whereas individuals experiencing mobility downward will be less satisfied because they blame political institutions for their mobility direction. Two hypotheses are formed and tested. I use the European Social Survey Round 8 dataset to analyse how mobility direction affects satisfaction through Ordinary Least Squares regression. The variables controlled for are age, domestic origin, gender and educational level. The results suggest that the hypotheses partially hold. Individuals who are mobile downwards are not less satisfied with democracy than the reference group as a whole, but they are less satisfied with democracy than individuals mobile upward. Non-mobile individuals are found to be the least satisfied. This concludes that it is mobility levels rather than direction that causes dissatisfaction.