M1 Expansion, polarization or stagnation of social mobility

Topic

Socioeconomic behavior can manifest in three distinct modes regarding how the population moves between strata: an expansion mode, where social mobility widens and more people shift strata compared to their parents; a polarization mode, where mobility concentrates at the extremes while the center stagnates; and a stagnation mode, where mobility halts across the board. The variable triggering the transition between these three modes is the rate of intergenerational social mobility combined with the evolution of median income relative to the cost of living; these are the same socioeconomic status and education indicators already measured in this track's diagnostic, viewed in terms of their evolution against the cost of living.

These three modes represent the standard context for socioeconomic behavior, and none constitutes an anomaly in itself: even a stagnation mode can persist for some time without the intergenerational mobility rate falling below levels expected for a given stage of economic development. A collapse in social mobility occurs when that stagnation mode—or deepening polarization—crosses the threshold relative to economic development; the anomaly is not a fourth mode, but rather the point at which stagnation or polarization ceases to be a transitory phase and instead describes a sustained decline below what economic development would otherwise lead one to expect.

Furthermore, a prolonged mode of polarization or stagnation creates the conditions under which the gap between expected and realized mobility is most likely to cross the critical threshold that sparks political radicalization driven by economic frustration: the longer social mobility remains stagnant or polarized rather than expanding, the greater the widening gap between what people expected and what they actually achieved.

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