Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This major study, conducted jointly by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Government Social Survey (GSS), was the first British study of occupational and labour mobility.

The project had two main concerns: the LSE research team, under the direction of Professor D.V. Glass, aimed to study the location and interpretation of patterns of inter-generational mobility in Britain, and the GSS, under the direction of Geoffrey Thomas, was interested in post-war employment strategy, along with patterns of intra-generational occupational change.

The data held by the UK Data Archive are those that were provided to the Oxford Mobility Study from the analysis decks stored by GSS (see Ridge (1974), p.23f). Unfortunately the two analysis decks (inter- and intra-generational mobility) are distinct and cannot readily be combined, but the data, apart from its straight historical value, are rich and unique. They are the only British data on mobility across three generations. Users should however note that the data may not be complete (see Main Topics section below), and should be analysed with caution.


Main Topics:

Topics covered include number of brothers, marital status and history, children, spouses' occupations, respondent and spouses' educational backgrounds, employment details and rural/urban location.

March 2011: users should note that for all cases in the data, gender is set to male. It is possible that this is either due to a coding error in the original data, or that the deposited data comprise only a subset of the study. This is currently under investigation by the UK Data Archive.