The Process of Status Attainment in the United States and Great Britain

Abstract

New procedures permitting a level of precision not heretofore posible in the comparative study of social mobility and the process of status attainment are used to compare data for the United States and Great Britain. We show that the British stratification system is somewhat more closed than that of the United States: there is less intergenerational occupational mobility in Britain, and the correlations among status variables are generally stronger. However, despite radical differences in the educational systems, the role of educational attainment in occupational mobility is highly similar in the two countries.