Intergenerational social mobility and welfare state regimes from a gendered perspective

Research description

Intergenerational social mobility is concerned with the relation between an individual’s current class position and that of their parents. In social mobility research, children’s class positions have traditionally been assigned based on their fathers’ social class and employment, and mothers - as they often did not have a paid job and in that sense did not financially contribute - were sidelined. However, this FWO project reverses this assumption. Times have changed: women entered the labour market on a massive scale in the second half of the 20th century. With this in mind, we set out to include all family members and examine the effect of the class positions of fathers and mothers on sons and daughters in 30 European countries. We also aim to explore the role of childcare in social mobility patterns, putting mothers, including housewives, front and centre.