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This contribution highlights that conventional social mobility research in the sociological sciences is faced with a severe limitation, as it neglects the importance of intercohort changes in the social origin structure. This is illustrated by the example of OED triangle research, in which compositional changes are only partially recognized as important factors for social fluidity. The paper shows that the implications of an intercohort compositional change of social origin in the process of educational expansion and occupational change have often been overlooked in this literature. The paper makes theoretical and methodological suggestions for a better integration of the compositional change of social origin into future empirical analyses of the OED triangle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) to examine how the composition of tertiary degree holders by social origin has changed across cohorts during a period of massive educational expansion. It also investigates how changes in the composition of social origins affect the proportion of downward mobility of children from academic families. The results of the empirical analysis reveal a surprising paradox: On the one hand, the rising share of children from academic families across cohorts has contributed to an increasing share of children from academic families among tertiary graduates. This is because of both the macro‐level proportion of children from academic families and the micro‐level probability of these children to obtain a tertiary degree have increased across cohorts. Thus, these macro‐level and micro‐level changes have reinforced each other. On the other hand, this change in the composition of social origin has also contributed to an increasing proportion of children from academic families who are downward mobile in successive cohorts. This is because the macro‐level share of children from academic families has increased more across cohorts than their downward mobility risk has decreased at the micro level. Thus, macro‐level changes were stronger and went in opposite direction to micro‐level changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]