A Slow Downward Road: Occupational Status Attainment in Mexico’s Development

Abstract

Mexico underwent several economic transformations between the 1950s and the early 21st century, most notably its integration to the world economy as of the 1980s. Sociological perspectives on global economic integration, development, and inequality, have contrasting predictions for the effect of these transformations on labor cohort occupational status. Perspectives that anticipate integration to spawn economic dynamism, predict improved occupational status over cohorts, but the international division of labor (IDL) perspective predicts worsening occupational status attainment. The institutionalist perspective does not have clear-cut predictions. Drawing on three surveys on Mexican social mobility (2006 and 2011, 2016), I examine labor cohort differences in occupational status to evaluate whether historical timing of entry into the workforce shapes occupational achievement dynamics throughout Mexico’s industrialization. I find significant direct effects of labor cohort membership on occupational status net of education and of parental occupational status. Specifically, entering the workforce at the height of Mexico’s industrialization, between the 1950s and early 1970s, led to higher status than entering during the transition to and subsequent institutionalization of neoliberal policy. The findings are most consistent with perspectives in sociology that emphasize the centrality for stratification of the international division of labor, but provide partial support for institutionalist perspectives.