The View from Above and Below: Subjective Mobility and Explanations of Class, Race, and Gender Inequality

Abstract

Popular explanations of inequality as the result of individual failings rather than structural processes are powerful cultural mechanisms that legitimize and reproduce inequality in the United States. How might individuals’ experiences of downward or upward mobility shape the explanations they give? We argue that perceived experiences of economic mobility may not only shape how Americans understand economic inequality but may also impact their beliefs about social inequalities more broadly. Using proportionally representative survey data of 1110 U.S. residents, we find that those who perceive that they currently occupy a lower economic class than when they were growing up (i.e., they experienced subjective downward mobility) were more likely than class-stable individuals to reject individualistic explanations of economic inequality and embrace structural ones. By contrast, the upwardly mobile were more likely to reject structural explanations. We find that mobility is similarly related to the likelihood of giving individualistic or structural explanations for race and gender inequality as well. Downward mobility is also associated with greater support of redistributive policies related to economic as well as gender and race inequality. These findings suggest that economic mobility may influence popular explanations of inequality and support for redistributive policy not only related to class inequality but for multiple axes of inequality.