Social mobility and personal satisfaction: evidence from ten countries

This paper examines survey data relating class mobility to satisfaction and dissatisfaction with seven different domains of everyday life among nation ally rep resentative samples of men and women living in ten industrialized nations. The evidence is set against competing pessimistic and optimistic a ccounts of the mobility experience found in earlier literature. Results sho w that individuals who move from working-class origins to middle-class dest inations are no more likely to be systematically satisfied or dissatisfied with life than are the socially immobile or even those downwardly mobile fr om advantaged backgrounds, into the working class. Indeed, in all nations, the overall association between class experience and satisfaction with life is both weak and uneven across the different life-domains. The study also serves to illustrate an important principle of research methodology more ge nerally.