Zoltán Lippényi

Inter-generational micro-class mobility during and after socialism: The power, education, autonomy, capital, and horizontal (PEACH) model in Hungary.

We propose a theoretical model of how occupational mobility operates differently under socialism than under market regimes. Our model specifies four vertical dimensions of occupational resources-power, education, autonomy, and capital-plus a horizontal dimension consisting of linkages among occupations in the same economic branch. Given the nature of state socialist political-economic institutions, we expect power to exhibit much stronger effects in the socialist mobility regime, while autonomy and capital should play greater stratifying roles after the market transition. Education should have stable effects, and horizontal linkages should diminish in strength with market reforms. We estimate our models parameters using data from surveys conducted in Hungary during and after the socialist period. We adopt a micro-class approach, though we test it against approaches that use more aggregated class categories. Our model provides a superior fit to other mobility models, and our results confirm our hypotheses about the distinctive features of the state socialist mobility regime. Mobility researchers often look for common patterns characterizing mobility in all industrialized societies. Our findings suggest that national institutions can produce fundamentally distinct patterns of mobility.

Social status homogamy in a religiously diverse society. Modernization, religious diversity, and status homogamy in Hungary between 1870-1950

Abstract This study investigates the historical patterns and determinants of marrying someone from the same social status background in Hungary from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. We focus on the classic question of how modernization influences homogamy, but we also address a problem studied less frequently: How does religious diversity in society relate to status homogamy? Utilizing data from a large sample of church marriage registers for present-day Hungary, we find a steady decline in the association between a bridegroom’s parental social status and his bride’s social background, and an initial increase and subsequent decline in the association between a bridegroom’s own status and a bride’s status of origin. More industrial social contexts are characterized by less parental status homogamy; however, greater educational opportunity is associated with more homogamy by bridegroom’s own status. We find a decline in same-status preferences over time and in more industrialized contexts in early modernizing Hungary, but also a short period of increasing meritocracy in marriage partner selection, which is likely to have been related to educational expansion. We find, too, lower social status homogamy in smaller religious groups, suggesting the importance of locally and historically variable opportunity structures in marital choices.