How to compare “subjective” and “objective” mobility

Methods for analyzing objective social mobility and social mobility as perceived by individuals are reviewed in connection with two studies of these types of mobility based on two surveys: the “Trois Générations” survey conducted by the Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Vieillesse (CNAV), France's state pension office, and INSEE's Formation-Qualification Professionnelle survey (FQP) (Institut National de Statistique et des Études Économiques). Subjective mobility is formalized quite differently in the two surveys, but so is objective mobility, which was formalized using specific procedures to make it comparable with respondents' subjective assessments. The present research note proposes a method for comparing the two sorts of mobility using standard mobility tables. When tables crossing three variables (social origins, social destinations, and average subjective mobility score) are used, the spontaneous sociology that collectively emerges from individual responses turns out to be not very different from scholarly sociology of social categories. After showing that subjective mobility varies coherently with objective mobility, an additional hypothesis is put forward to account for some of the observed discrepancies.