Status Attainment of Siblings during Modernization

• Published in: American sociological review Vol. 79; no. 3; pp. 549 - 574
• Main Authors: Knigge, Antonie, Maas, Ineke, van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., Mandemakers, Kees
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2014; Sage Publications; American Sociological Association
• Subjects: 19th century; Attainment; Brothers; Cities; Classes, stratification, mobility; Communication; Communities; Educational Attainment; Employment Level; Families & family life; Family (Sociological Unit); Family background; Geographic Mobility; Indexes (Measures); Industrial development; Industrialization; Intergenerational mobility; Local government; Mass communication; Mass media; Mobile communication systems; Modernization; Netherlands; Nineteenth Century; Occupational status; Occupations; Parents; Public transportation; Regression analysis; Scope of employment; Siblings; Social Mobility; Social organization. Social system. Social structure; Sociology; Sons; Status Attainment; Transportation; Upward mobility; Urbanization; Netherlands; modernization; status attainment; intergenerational social mobility; historical large-scale database; sibling models; Intergenerational Mobility; Modernization; Social status; Class of destination; Social Mobility; Case History; Phratry; Data bank
• ISSN: 0003-1224; 1939-8271
• DOI: 10.1177/0003122414529586

The modernization thesis claims that intergenerational social mobility increased over time due to industrialization and other modernization processes. Here, we test whether this is indeed the case. We study approximately 360,000 brothers from 189,000 families covering more than 500 municipalities in the Netherlands and a 70-year period (1827 to 1897). We complement these sibling-and family-level data with municipal indicators for the degree of industrialization, mass communication, urbanization, educational expansion, geographic mobility, and mass transportation. We analyze these data by applying sibling models, that is, multilevel regression models where brothers are nested in families, which in turn are nested in communities. We find that the total—unmeasured—family effect on sons' status attainment decreases slightly and is higher than that found for contemporary societies. The measured influence of the family, operationalized by father's occupational status, decreased gradually in the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century. A substantial part of this decrease was due to some, but not all, of the modernization processes adduced by the modernization thesis.