Testing the psychological costs of intergenerational social mobility: Evidence from a German panel study

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Health Economics

Background:

• Intergenerational social mobility is a key factor in social stratification and individual life outcomes.
• Previous research often overlooks selection effects, potentially misattributing psychological costs to mobility itself.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the psychological costs associated with upward and downward intergenerational social mobility.
• To disentangle the effects of social mobility experience from pre-existing individual differences (selection effects) on mental health and well-being.

Main Methods:

• Utilized longitudinal data from a German panel study (adolescence to work-life).
• Assessed psychological adjustment relative to parental educational attainment.
• Employed entropy balancing to compare models with and without selection adjustment.

Main Results:

• Unadjusted analyses indicated downward mobility correlated with poorer mental health (falling-from-grace hypothesis).
• Upward mobility showed no significant link to mental health (acculturation hypothesis).
• After adjusting for selection effects, the negative impact of downward mobility on mental health vanished.

Conclusions:

• The psychological costs previously attributed to social mobility are likely due to pre-existing individual vulnerabilities, not the mobility experience itself.
• Selection processes significantly influence the observed relationship between social mobility and mental health outcomes.
• Future research must incorporate selection effects to accurately assess the impact of social mobility.