Economic inequality has been one of the more pressing issues of recent times as the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of society has grown ever greater.  New research from Princeton University provides scant optimism that it’s a problem we’re getting to grips with, and indeed suggests that social mobility is harder now than it has been at any time over the last 150 years.

The researchers tapped into newly available census data that allows them to go back to the 1850s.  They began their search by identifying around five million people from the 1940s, using their names, ages, social security numbers and so on.

Due to the fact that most women didn’t have jobs outside of the home in the 1800s, the pool was limited mostly to men (and white men at that).  The data showed that men born before 1900 experienced considerable social mobility, and often much more than their fathers did.

Upwardly mobile

This was a period typified by the transition from agriculture to industry, with many men moving to towns and cities to work in manufacturing.

“Many of them migrated from farms to booming towns and cities to become operative workers, blacksmiths, bricklayers, truck drivers, and sales workers, so they achieved a higher socioeconomic status compared to their parents,” the researchers say.

This path began to subtly change as the cachet of certain professions changed.  For instance, in the 1850s, jobs liked cashier required people to be literate, which inferred a degree of status on the role, but this began to decline over time.  Roles such as typist and elevator operator have suffered such a decline, with a relatively small number of professions, such as scientist, engineer and architect remaining fairly stable.

Quickening pace

This began to accelerate with the baby boomer generation, with intergenerational ties therefore becoming tighter, which results in children today commonly having the same socioeconomic status as their parents.

There has been a noticeable divergence between economic inequality, which has soared, and social mobility, which has largely stagnated since the 1970s however.  It’s a trend that is interesting, but the researchers accept the homogeneity of data restricts their ability to cast too wide a perspective on events.

“For us to trace these changes over time, we’re comparing those who were in the U.S. in the 1850s to those who are here now, but the racial composition has changed significantly,” they concede. “Although this is the best historical census data we have, it still excludes large swaths of the population.”

The team hope to overcome this by augmenting their research with fresh datasets to provide greater granularity, such as around regional variations and for different racial groups.

“I think the patterns for ethnic minorities might be different than what we see here,” the researchers say.

Nonetheless, the team hope that their work sheds some important light on the difficulties inherent in promoting social mobility, and the fundamental lack of progress over the past 40 years or so.