Gradationalism Revisited: Intergenerational Occupational Mobility Along Axes of Occupational Characteristics¹

Studies of intergenerational occupational mobility typically characterize occupations quantitatively in one of two ways: gradationally or categorically. Both methods likely grossly oversimplify the complex realities of the transmission mechanisms of occupations across generations. With recent advances in the amount and quality of occupation data, such quantitative characterizations have become a nontrivial decision for researchers. This study provides a multidimensional gradational method as an alternative to existing methods by focusing on occupational traits such as work-related knowledge, values, abilities, work activities, and required skills to understand how occupations are transmitted across generations. Our results show that the multidimensional gradational perspective provides more parsimonious and comprehensive explanations of occupational reproduction and mobility than traditional unidimensional gradational or categorical accounts alone. In doing so, we demonstrate the persistence of occupational characteristics themselves, across generations within mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son pairs and between occupations that span class boundaries.