American Dream of Upward Mobility for Modern Generation

The social mobility question is often used to question the much-hyped American dream often talked about in sarcasm. Social mobility is simply the ability, chance, or possibility that an individual or group of persons such as a family can change through time from one social stratification to the other. Generational mobility as one branch of social mobility is divided into two; intergenerational mobility and intragenerational mobility. Intragenerational mobility refers to the social change within a given generation’s lifetime while inter-generation mobility refers to social change across various generations.

Upward mobility in America is all about intragenerational mobility as earlier thought. However, research has also shown that working families in the US have not changed their economic status or any significant change in social life thereby indicating that America has intergenerational mobility. This means that change in social status will take place in generations to come but not this one. Unfortunately, sociologists have expressed the difficulty in assessing the changes taking place in one generation in the case of ours.

This means that there might have occurred some mobility only that the change is not noticeable at the moment. If we were to stick with intergenerational mobility, then this generation is likely to be the same in its lifetime with the change expected in the next generation. Compared to other generations, this generation is not changing and if any change is going to be there, it will be very minimal. This is because various issues can result in a change in social status. These issues include education, race, gender, and social systems.