TY - JOUR
T1 - Tightening up
T2 - Declining class mobility during Russia's market transition
AU - Gerber, Theodore P.
AU - Hout, Michael
PY - 2004/10
Y1 - 2004/10
N2 - This study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia using data from six surveys. Belying claims that class differences did not matter in the Soviet Union, the authors find that social origin did affect occupational opportunity during Russia's Soviet period. But the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations. Men and women were equally constrained by their social origin, even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods. As the economic transformation took hold, fewer Russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile. Political and economic transition, not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones, strengthened the association between origins and destinations. Career mobility during the 1990s took the form of a regression toward origins, as workers who had the most upward mobility during the Soviet era lost the most in the transition to markets, abetting the reproduction of the class structure across generations as they fell.
AB - This study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia using data from six surveys. Belying claims that class differences did not matter in the Soviet Union, the authors find that social origin did affect occupational opportunity during Russia's Soviet period. But the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations. Men and women were equally constrained by their social origin, even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods. As the economic transformation took hold, fewer Russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile. Political and economic transition, not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones, strengthened the association between origins and destinations. Career mobility during the 1990s took the form of a regression toward origins, as workers who had the most upward mobility during the Soviet era lost the most in the transition to markets, abetting the reproduction of the class structure across generations as they fell.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=12344309207&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/000312240406900504
DO - 10.1177/000312240406900504
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:12344309207
SN - 0003-1224
VL - 69
SP - 677
EP - 703
JO - American sociological review
JF - American sociological review
IS - 5
ER -