ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on individual-earnings mobility and its relation to social class. It examines the occurrence of change in economic well-being and its relation to family composition and changes thereof. Cross-sectional income data give a snapshot of how income is distributed within a society. The strategy chosen for the analysis of annual earnings below is not to standardize our dependent variable by working hours, periods of unemployment, job and class changes, and so forth. Male earnings are, however, not the only determinant of economic well-being. Before Scandinavian welfare states matured, this measure probably did coincide fairly well with economic well-being. The sample in the analysis of annual earnings includes only men born between 1924 and 1943 who were wage earners in 1973 and still were coded as such in 1981. The reason for excluding the self-employed is the severe problem with comparability between earnings and self-employed income.
