Bukowski, Paweł;
Clark, Gregory;
Gáspár, Attila;
Pető, Rita;
(2022)
Social Mobility and Political Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949–2017.
Journal of Population Economics
, 35
(4)
pp. 1551-1588.
10.1007/s00148-021-00875-w.
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Abstract
This paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary during the period 1949 to 2017, using surnames to measure social status. In those years, there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian People’s Republic (1949–1989), which was a communist regime with an avowed aim of favouring the working class. The second is the modern liberal democracy (1989–2017), which is a free-market economy. We find five surprising things. First, social mobility rates were low for both upper- and lower-class families during 1949–2017, with an underlying intergenerational status correlation of 0.6–0.8. Second, social mobility rates under communism were the same as in the subsequent capitalist regime. Third, the Romani minority throughout both periods showed even lower social mobility rates. Fourth, the descendants of the eighteenth-century noble class in Hungary were still significantly privileged in 1949 and later. And fifth, although social mobility rates did not change measurably during the transition, the composition of the political elite changed rapidly and sharply.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Social Mobility and Political Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949–2017 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00148-021-00875-w |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-021-00875-w |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Social mobility · Status inheritance · Institutions · Transition |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > SSEES UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10156302 |
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