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OCCUPATIONAL DISTANCE

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011

Occupational distance is the distance between one occupation and another where occupations are ranked on a hierarchy of status.

The occupational distance concept is central to studies of social mobility because it permits some measurement of the extent of mobility. For example, to change one's occupation from unskilled labor to semi-skilled labor involves less occupational distance than to move from unskilled labor to professional accountant.

Occupational distance is therefore an important measurement in determining the relevance of social mobility.

BOGARDUS, E. S., Occupational Distance. Sociol. and Soc. Res., 1928, 13, 73-81.
There are two kinds of occupational distance: vertical and horizontal. The former indicates the differences in prestige accorded by cultural norms to members of various occupations; the latter indicates the lack of sympathetic understanding between occupations of similar or near-similar status because of the differences in background and training of the members of the two occupations. Bogardus devised a scoring scheme for measuring in terms of social distance the reactions of people to various occupations. In one study among 861 college students, it was found that persons preparing for teaching and the ministry "reacted against motion picture actors, vaudeville actors and jazz musicians, on the ground that these occupations were socially detrimental." In contrast, commerce and dentistry students reacted to these same occupations favorably because they "add zest to life." Thus, vertical distances between occupations are related to the prestige and social status which occupations possess among persons outside the particular groups. As Bogardus points out, there is a kind of occupational mobility which affects the status of occupations. For example, aviation seems to be rising, whereas it may be true that acting is declining slightly in the scale of prestige.

Bršulhart et al. (2006) use data on individual workers to estimate the impact of IIT on both the ‘sectoral distance’ and ‘occupational distance’ which a worker moves when trade expands, conditioning for a range of other industrial and worker characteristics. They report results that are consistent with the smooth adjustment hypothesis. In their industry level regressions, their results are less strong when their occupational mobility variable is used to measure adjustment.However, when individual level data is used, increases in marginal intra-industry trade significantly reduce both the sectoral and occupational distance of worker moves. Interestingly, the effects of trade on worker moves are small relative to other factors.  

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