Upward social mobility and life satisfaction: the cases of United Kingdom and Switzerland

in Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (2015), 6(3), 13-14

Status is a major determinant of subjective well-being (SWB). This is one of the primary assumptions of social production function theory. In contrast, the dissociative hypothesis holds that upward social ... [more ▼]

Status is a major determinant of subjective well-being (SWB). This is one of the primary assumptions of social production function theory. In contrast, the dissociative hypothesis holds that upward social mobility may be linked to identity problems, cognitive distress, and reduced levels of SWB because of lost ties to one’s class of origin. In our paper, we use panel data from the United Kingdom (British Household Panel Survey) and Switzerland (Swiss Household Panel) to test these hypotheses. These two countries are compared because historically, social inequality and upward mobility have played distinct roles in each country’s popular discourse. We conduct longitudinal multilevel analyses to gauge the effects of intragenerational and intergenerational upward mobility on life satisfaction (as a cognitive component of SWB), controlling for previous levels of life satisfaction, dynamic class membership, and well-researched determinants of SWB such as age and health problems. Our results provide some evidence for effects of social class and social mobility on well-being in the UK sample, however, there are no such effects in the Swiss sample. The UK findings support the idea of dissociative effects, that is, intergenerational upward mobility is negatively associated with SWB. [less ▲]