UCLA

Transmission of status across generations is a central concern in studies of social stratification and mobility. Most sociological research takes a two-generation approach to understand social mobility from parents to children. Not until recently did mobility researchers acknowledge the role of grandparents, who have become more involved in grandchildren’s lives because of increasing human longevity, declining fertility, and the growing number of single-parent families. My approach to multigenerational social mobility in this dissertation looks at the importance of grandparents, but also looks beyond the grandparent generation including great grandparents, relatives in kin networks, and even more remote ancestors. The three empirical chapters take into account long family histories of social status that span from three to more than ten generations. Findings from these chapters show that individuals’ social success is not predetermined by their ancestry, but it nevertheless is influenced by ancestry.