Community Decline as a Generator of 'Elite' Mobility: A Gender Analysis.

Economic decline in a community offering opportunities for higher education was studied as a contributing factor to extensive upward mobility among persons beginning their occupational careers. One process through which mobility into professional occupations by individuals whose fathers were manual workers ("elite" mobility) was documented--the need for the children of blue-collar workers to escape the industrial decline in their local community. Evidence came from the high levels of mobility into professional and managerial occupations experienced by graduates from blue-collar backgrounds in the 1946 class of a rust-belt community high school. For men, the mobility into higher status professional and managerial occupations arose primarily from the large proportion who continued with postsecondary education in the face of declining job opportunities at the local level. Very few women took advanced degrees. Only three women were in the higher professions or management, but a sizable minority achieved lower-status positions in these occupations. Women improved their participation in lower-status professions and management by leaving the community. Compared to noncollege men who moved, more of those remaining in the community were in lower management, few in high management, and none in the professions. (Appendixes include a list of 21 references and 3 tables.) (Author/YLB)