EVALUATION OF OCCUPATIONS: A REFLECTION OF JEWISH AND ITALIAN MOBILITY DIFFERENCES.

This article focuses on Jewish and Italian social mobility differences in the U.S., in an attempted evaluation of occupations. It also analyzes the delimited aspect of mobility in an effort to detect Jewish and Italian cultural differences as they may be present in the perspectives of adolescent boys. The aspect of mobility considered is the evaluation of occupations of different status. The underlying assumption is that boys who find high status occupations more attractive will in later life have a better chance of occupying the higher positions. East European Jews have been more consistently upwardly mobile in the U.S. than Southern Italians. There are many alternative explanations for this difference. There is some evidence that Jews came to the U.S. with occupational skills better suited to urban living than those of the Italians, even though both groups had approximately the same economic status upon arrival. he cultural tradition of veneration of rational control and learning in the Jewish religion has no parallel in the Catholic beliefs of Southern Italians and, insofar as this tradition has been transformed into a greater respect and desire for higher education in the U.S., it has probably contributed strongly to Jewish upward mobility.