Bildung und soziale Mobilität in Deutschland

The article investigates the long term development of intergenerational social mobility in Germany and how this development is related to educational attainment in successive birth cohorts from 1925 to 1974. To this aim, data of more than 30 representative population surveys carried out since the mid 1970es is harmonized and analysed using log-linear models. The results show that among members of the younger cohorts class position attained in adult life depends less on their parent’s class position than among older cohorts. This increase in intergenerational social fluidity is shown to derive from two education-related developments. First, in the younger cohorts educational attainment depends less on parental class, and because education strongly affects class position in adulthood the latter also depends less on parental class. Second, parental class usually influences respondent’s class also thru other, often called ‘direct effects’, independent of the education mediated influences. These direct effects tend to be stronger among individuals with low than those with high education. As, due to educational expansion, the younger cohorts include reduced proportions of people with low education and increased proportions with high education, also direct effects are lower among the younger than among the older cohorts. Thus, intergenerational social fluidity has increased both because of reduced inequality in educational attainment and reduced direct effects of class origin on class destination. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015