Do Occupational Attitudes Affect Intra-Generational Mobility Later?

Abstract

     As the causes of intra-generational mobility, some external structural variables have been the focus of attention in social inequality studies; while in occupational attitudes studies, it has been assumed that some inherent attitudinal variables have an impact on job mobility, which is one side of intra-generational mobility. This paper investigates (1) whether workers' occupational attitudes actually affect the separations from their jobs, and (2) whether they do the mobility from worker's stratifications, which is other side of intra-generational mobility. Using panel data that traced male samples over a long period of 27 years (1979-2006) makes it possible to test the effects of workers' occupational attitudes on their intra-generational mobility, which have not yet been demonstrated. In my analysis, I distinguish between Job Mobility from one's company and Class Mobility from one's occupational stratification, and employ occupational commitment as the occupational attitude. The results of the analysis using a discrete-time logit model show that men's occupational commitment in 1979, which is the start time of that panel-observation, decreased the likelihood of their Class Mobility after that. On the other hand, it does not an explicit effect on their Job Mobility. These findings imply that in a period of post economic growth, men's occupational attitudes played the more important role in fluidity and stability of social mobility rather than of those in the labor market.