The Occupational Mobility of Sibling Groups

Abstract

A new aspect of intergenerational occupational mobility is investigated in this paper: the occupations of all sons in a sample of families, rather than the occupation of only one son per family. Taking all sons whose fathers' occupations are the same, do these sons disperse individually over a range of occupations, or do they tend to cluster in family groups, so that one group of brothers is concentrated around one occupational level while other groups are at other levels? The same investigation was made of daughters' husbands. The data were obtained from interviews with a probability sample of Helsinki residents. A familial influence on occupations, which is independent of father's occupation, is called "sibling group differentiation". The presence of this factor was investigated by means of analysis of variance, applied separately at each level of father's occupation. Sibling group differentiation was found to be present in the occupations of groups of brothers at all levels of father's occupation except the lowest and to be present, although less consistently, in the occupations of sisters' husbands. These findings were unaffected when type of origin of the family, whether or not the father was a farmer, age, and size of the family were investigated. Of the total variance in occupations of children whose fathers' occupations were alike, about one quarter was explained by sibling group differentiation. The causal interpretation offered is that the variable is due to the effect of the home environment on aspirations, and that a necessary condition for its occurrence is a certain minimum level of mobility opportunities.