Family Social Mobility

Where people live matters. Neighborhood environments have consequences for their families' well-being and their children's long-term life chances. The quality of local public services (particularly schools), the prevalence of crime and violence, the influences of peers and social networks, and the proximity to jobs can all act either to isolate families from social and economic opportunities or to enhance their prospects for the future. A substantial body of social science research finds that growing up in a distressed, high poverty neighborhood is associated with an increased risk of bad outcomes, including school failure, poor health, delinquency and crime, teen parenting, and joblessness. Education is one factor which determines whether a person is upwardly mobile. Our family history starts with a split social mobility. One set of grandparents attended college, the other did not. My maternal grandfather worked in the citrus groves and my grandmother stayed at home. Living paycheck to paycheck, they were able to stretch their resources to care for their seven children. They owned a small farm and all the children help with the chores. My paternal grandparents both attended college; my grandfather was an oil and natural gas surveyor and grandmother was an English teacher and later superintendent. . They both came of a higher social class family and therefore lived in comfort. My grandfather traveled to Indonesia and helped develop and find more oil in the country.
My father attended a four year college and my mother got her degree in nursing. My father was an Army man of 30 years, during...
In sociology and economics, as well as in common political discourse, social mobility refers to the degree to which an individual or group's status is able to change in terms of position in the social hierarchy. To this extent it most commonly refers to material wealth and the ability of an individual or group to move up the class system. Such a change may be described as