Intergenerational mobility in Britain: new evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

In this chapter, we analyse the degree of intergenerational mobility in Britain using a data source that has never been used before for this purpose: the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991–99. Examination of this issue is, at present, limited by the short life of the survey – indeed, the first wave of data of the BHPS was collected in 1991. Nonetheless, such data allow us to make two distinct contributions. The first is substantive and refers to a better understanding (and measurement) of social mobility in Britain for a large sample of individuals from several cohorts and different backgrounds. This can be achieved by employing a measure of socio-economic position that is commonly used in sociology, the Hope–Goldthorpe score of occupational prestige. The results from this analysis are interesting in their own right, and may help integrate the findings that have emerged from sociology and economics in the recent past. The second contribution is methodological, and suggestive of the potentials that the BHPS offers for future research in this and related areas. This goal is achieved by matching parents to their young adult children who are in the labor market, and allows us to examine mobility using measures of economic position that are more conventional for economists, such as earnings and income. Although the estimates are far from conclusive, they are suggestive of avenues for future research.