1 David Glass ed., Social mobility in Britain (London, 1954). The reasons given by Glass for discussing the individual chapters in a summary framework may also apply to this short essay: ‘The previous discussion aimed to show that the various chapters in this volume, though covering a wide range of topics and deriving from a series of investigations, are linked together and fit into a common framework of research, focussed on social status and mobility … To say this, however, by no means implies that the actual research itself is free from limitations or defects. Each chapter draws attention to deficiencies of approach or material, and either explicitly or implicitly suggests ways in which subsequent inquiries might be improved. There is no need to repeat those suggestions here. But there are, in addition, certain general questions which should be considered …' (p. 10).

2 See e.g. Biblarz, T. J., Bengtson, V. L. and Bucur, A., ‘Social mobility across three generations’, Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (1996), 188–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erola, R. and Moiso, P., ‘Social mobility over three generations in Finland 1950–2000’, European Sociological Review 23 (2007), 169–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and A. Hakkinen, ‘The mechanisms of intergenerational social mobility or impoverishment in Finland 1700–2000’, paper presented at the XIVth International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, 21 to 25 August 2006.

3 Ganzeboom, H. B. G., Treiman, D. J. and Ultee, W. C., ‘Comparative intergenerational stratification research: three generations and beyond’, Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1999), 277–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hout, M. and DiPrete, T. A., ‘What we have learned: RC28's contributions to knowledge about social stratification’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 24 (2006), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5 See Hauser, R. M. and Mossel, P. A., ‘Fraternal resemblance in educational attainment and occupational status’, American Journal of Sociology 91 (1985), 650–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and I. Sieben, Sibling similarities and social stratification: the impact of family background across countries and cohorts (Nijmegen, 2001).

6 D. J. Treiman, ‘Industrialization and social stratification’, in E. O. Lauman ed., Social stratification: research and theory for the 1970's (Indianapolis, 1970), 207–34.

7 See also R. Zijdeman and I. Maas, ‘Beyond the local marriage market: the influence of social background and modernization on spatial homogamy’, paper presented to the International Seminar on Social Mobility and Demographic Behavior: A Long Term Perspective, Los Angeles, 11–13 December 2008, and Hilde Bras, Jan Kok and Kees Mandemakers, ‘Sibling structure and status attainment across contexts: evidence from the Dutch past’, paper presented to the International Seminar on Social Mobility and Demographic Behavior: A Long Term Perspective, Los Angeles, 11–13 December 2008. For the twentieth century, see S. Rijken, Educational expansion and status attainment: a cross national and over-time comparison (Utrecht, 1999); this research is part of a large research project by H. Ganzeboom, see http://home.fsw.vu.nl/HBG.Ganzeboom/ISMF/index.htm [last accessed 1 March 2009].

8 R. Penn, Skilled workers in the class structure (Cambridge, 1985).

9 See e.g. Ran Abramitzky, Adeline Delavande and Luís Vasconcelos, ‘Marrying up: the role of sex ratio in marriage by class’, working paper, February 2009, available at http://www.stanford.edu/~ranabr/marriage.pdf [last accessed 1 March 2009].

10 See e.g. Peter Kitson, ‘The nature and extent of individual-level occupational change in two English market towns, c.1600–1820’ (forthcoming); Julie Marfany, ‘Proto-industrialization and occupational mobility in Catalonia, c.1680–1829’, paper presented at the XIVth International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, 21 to 25 August 2006.

11 See e.g. Ferrie, J. and Long, J., ‘The path to convergence: intergenerational occupational mobility in Britain and the U.S. in three eras’, Economic Journal 117 (March 2007), 61–71.Google Scholar It may be noted that for the historical study of social mobility one can also use census data, which are less frequently available in Europe (not the case in the USA) than vital registers, generally need to be linked to a census from another year to study social mobility (which is laborious and raises issues of selectivity), but they often contain more information on the respondent.

12 Buchmann, C. and Hannum, E., ‘Education and stratification in developing countries: a review of theories and research’, Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001), 77–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See K. Makowski, ‘Social mobility in nineteenth-century Poznan’, in A. Miles and D. Vincent eds., Building European society: occupational change and social mobility in Europe, 1840–1940 (Manchester, 1993), 92–115; V. Vladimirov ed., Istoricheskor professiovedenie: sbornik nauchnikh statie' (Barnaul, 2004), and V. Vladimirov ed., Materialy cerkovno-prihodskogo ucheta naselenija kak istoriko-demograficheskij istochnik (Barnaul, 2007).

14 See e.g. K. Holt, ‘Marriage choices in a plantation Society: Bahia, Brazil’, in M. H. D. van Leeuwen, I. Maas and A. Miles eds., Marriage choices and class boundaries: endogamy and social class in history (Cambridge, 2005). T. Botelho, M. H. D. van Leeuwen, I. Maas and A. Miles, ‘HISCO (Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations): construindo uma codifacao de ocupacoes para o passado brasileiro’, Revista da ABET (Brazilian Journal of Labour Studies) VI (2) (July/December 2006); T. Botelho and M. H. D. van Leeuwen eds., Desigualdade social na América do Sul em perspectiva histórica (University Press Mino de Gerais, forthcoming).

15 J. Pastore, Inequality and social mobility in Brazil (Madison, 1982); Castleman, B. A., ‘Social climbers in a colonial Mexican city: individual mobility within the Sistema de Castas in Orizaba, 1777–1791’, Colonial Latin American Review 10 (2001), 239–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acemoglu, D., Johnson, C. and Robinson, J. A., ‘The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation’, The American Economic Review 91 (2001), 1369–401CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berhman, J. R., Gaviria, A., and Székely, M., ‘Intergenerational mobility in Latin America’, Economia 2 (2001), 1–33.Google Scholar

16 E.g. F. A. Gealogo, ‘HISCO applications to Philippine parish records: labor patterns and gender relations in four 19th century Philippine localities’, The Journal of History [of the Philippine National Historical Society] (in press); Kok, J., Wang, Sping and Chuang, Ying-chang, ‘Who married how? Modelling marital decisions in Early-twentieth century Taiwan’, Journal of Family History 33 (2008), 430–51Google Scholar. For a study using other indicators of status than occupation, see Campbell, C. and Lee, J., ‘Social mobility from a kinship perspective: rural Liaoning 1789–1909’, International Review of Social History 48 (2003), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See e.g. Becker, G. and Tomes, N. (1979), ‘An equilibrium theory of the distribution of income and intergenerational mobility’, Journal of Political Economy 87 (6), 1153–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Restuccia, D. and Urrutia, C., ‘Intergenerational persistence of earnings: the role of early and college education’, The American Economic Review 94 (2004), 1354–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. Solon, ‘A model of intergenerational mobility variation over time and place’, in M. Corak ed., Generational income mobility in North America and Europe (Cambridge, 2004), 38–47; or see the ongoing Economic Mobility Project (an American private-initiative project), at http://www.economicmobility.org/ [last accessed 2 March 2009].

18 E.g. R. L. Zijdeman and K. Mandemakers, ‘De rol van het gymnasiaal en middelbaar onderwijs bij de intergenerationele overdracht van status, Nederland 1865–1940’, in Ineke Maas, Marco H. D. van Leeuwen and Kees Mandemakers eds., Honderdvijftig jaar levenslopen: de Historische Steekproef Nederlandse bevolking (special issue), Mens & Maatschappij 83 (2008), 151–74.

19 See for example the English autobiographies collected by A. Miles in Social mobility in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England (Basingstoke, 1999), D. Vincent, ‘Mobility, bureaucracy and careers in early-twentieth-century Britain’, in Miles and Vincent, Building European society, 217–39, and Masuch, M., ‘Social mobility and middling self-identity: the ethos of British autobiographers, 1600–1750’, Social History 20 (1995), 45–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the French and German ones listed in M. J. Maynes, Taking the hard road: life course in French and German workers' autobiographies in the era of industrialization (Chapel Hill and London, 1995).

20 Miles, Social mobility in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England; Vincent, ‘Mobility, bureaucracy and careers in early-twentieth-century Britain’.

21 Maynes, Taking the hard road.

22 Ibid., 94.

23 Jackson, Goldthorpe, J. H., and Mills, C., ‘Education, employers and class mobility’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 23 (2005), 1–30Google Scholar; S. Sacchi, A. Salvisberg and M. Buchmann, ‘Long-term dynamics of skill demand in Switzerland’, in H. Kriesi et al. eds., Contemporary Switzerland: revisiting the special class (New York, 2005), 105–34.

24 One can think of many other data sources, such as social services archives, or militia registers; see e.g. Lee, C., ‘Military positions and post-service occupational mobility of Union Army veterans, 1861–1880’, Explorations in Economic History 44 (2007), 680–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

25 T. A. B. Snijders and R. J. Bosker, Multilevel analysis: an introduction to basic and advanced multilevel modelling (London, 1999); J. Hox, Multilevel analysis: techniques and applications (Mahwah, New Jersey, 2002). For the example of the ‘Contextual Database’ of the Generations and Gender Programme, see M. Spielauer, ‘Responding to new data demands for comparative research and multilevel analysis: the Contextual Database of the Generations and Gender Program’, Proceedings of the Statistics Canada Symposium 2005, available via http://www.demogr.mpg.de/databases/cdb/downloads/cdb.pdf [last accessed 2 March 2009].

26 See Goodman, L. A., ‘Simple models for the analysis of association in cross-classifications having ordered categories’, Journal of the American Statistical Association 74 (1979), 537–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Hout, Mobility tables (Beverly Hills, 1983); R. Erikson and J. H. Goldthorpe, The constant flux: a study of class mobility in industrial societies (Oxford, 1992); Xie, Y., ‘The log-multiplicative layer effect model for comparing mobility tables’, American Sociological Review 57 (1992), 380–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and van Leeuwen, M. H. D. and Maas, I., ‘Log-linear analysis of changes in mobility patterns. Some models with an application to the Amsterdam upper classes in the second half of the nineteenth century’, Historical Methods 24 (1991), 66–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 M. H. D. van Leeuwen, I. Maas and A. Miles, HISCO: Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (Leuven, 2002); van Leeuwen, M. H. D., Maas, I. and Miles, A., ‘Creating an Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO): an exercise in multi-national, interdisciplinary co-operation’, Historical Methods 37 (2004), 186–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/ [last accessed 2 March 2009].

28 M. H. D. van Leeuwen and I. Maas, ‘A short note on HISCLASS’, November 2005, available at http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/list_pub.php?categories=hisclass [last accessed 2 March 2009]; P. S. Lambert, R. Zijdeman, I. Maas, K. Prandy and M. H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘HISCAM – presentation and evaluation of an historical occupational stratification scale based upon the analysis of social interaction’, paper presented to the European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, 26 February – 1 March 2008, available at http://www.camsis.stir.ac.uk/hiscam/hiscam_esshc08.pdf [last accessed 2 March 2009].

29 Conzen, K. N., ‘Quantification and the New Urban History’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 13 (1983), 653–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Ibid., 664.

31 Ibid., 672.

32 Ibid., 655.

33 Ibid., 676.