Institutions and actors in the creation of social inequality: A rational choice approach to social inequality

Research question: Structure and agency Specialists in the study of social stratification and social mobility focus on the intergenerational reproduction of social class. A classic example of this line of research is the analysis of intergenerational mobility tables as is illustrated in Table 2.1. In this case, the 2005 SSM data1 for Japan is utilized (Miwa and Ishida 2008: 91), and the main diagonal cells show the number and row percentage of sons who inherit their father’s class. In general, these figures are higher than those in other cells demonstrating a strong link between the classes of fathers and their sons, that is, class reproduction. When log-linear models have been applied to the table in controlling for the effects of marginal distributions, similar associations between the two variables have been observed.