ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the accumulation of knowledge about social stratification that has accrued from mobility research since the early 1970s. The Lipset-Zetterberg hypothesis of no cross-national variation in mobility was supplanted in the 1970s by the Featherman, Jones, and Hauser (FJH) hypothesis of no cross-national variation in the association between origins and destinations. The leading alternative to the Lipset-Zetterberg hypothesis of no cross-national differences in mobility was the thesis of industrialization. The thesis of industrialism posits that expanding universalism will immutably erode the class barriers represented by the association between origins and destinations. The effect of class origins on class destinations has fallen by between 30 and 50 percent since the early 1960s. Much of that change is attributable to the expansion of public support for higher education. Public policy can affect the association between origins and destinations either directly or indirectly. The most pervasive reform of the twentieth century has been the worldwide expansion of secondary and higher education.
