UPWARD SOCIAL MOBILITY AND POLITICAL ORIENTATION: A RE-EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE.

That upward social mobility has a different effect on the political orientations of Europeans than of Americans Is commonly accepted. Several scholars have concluded that upwardly mobile Europeans are less conservative than middle-class stables. The contrasting conclusion that in the United States upwardly mobile people become even more conservative than middle-class stables is based on a single study completed some years ago. Here, this relationship is re-examined by analyzing data from five nationally-representative American samples over .14 years. In these samples, the upward mobiles are consistently less likely to be conservative than the middle-class stables and more likely to be conservative than the working-class stables. However, analysis of the joint effects of sex and social mobility indicates that American upwardly mobile males are more likely to approximate the politics 0/the class to which they have risen than are upwardly mobile females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]