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SOME SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL CORRELATES OF INTERGENERATIONAL SOCIAL MOBILITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE WEST OF SCOTLAND COLLABORATIVE STUDY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2001

DAVID BLANE
Affiliation:
Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Science, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, Charing Cross Campus, London W6 8RP, UK
GEORGE DAVEY SMITH
Affiliation:
Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, UK
CAROLE HART
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Glasgow, UK
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Abstract

Mainstream sociological studies of intergenerational social mobility have emphasised social factors such as education and the material and cultural resources of the family of origin as the main influences on the chances and direction of social mobility. Medical sociology in contrast has been more interested in its physical correlates such as height and health status. Data from the West of Scotland Collaborative study allow an examination of the relationship between social mobility and both social and physical factors. Height, education and material circumstances in the family of origin, indexed as the number of siblings, were each independently associated with the chances of both upward and downward social mobility in this dataset. In each case the net effect of this social mobility was to constrain the social distribution of these variables. Any role which these factors may play in indirect health selection, it is argued, cannot account for social class differences in adult health.

Type
RESEARCH NOTE
Copyright
1999 BSA Publications Ltd

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