Breaking Barriers or Persisting Traditions? Fertility Histories, Occupational Achievements, and Intergenerational Mobility of Italian Women

Women and men share comparable levels of intergenerational social mobility in all Western economies, except for Southern European countries, where women’s life chances appear less determined by their family background. This is puzzling given Southern European’s persistent familialism, lack of institutional support for mothers, and the strong influence of social origin. We examine the role of women’s social class of origin on occupational achievements across birth cohorts in Italy, focusing on the close link between fertility dynamics and social mobility opportunities. By leveraging nationally representative retrospective data, we observed that middle- and working-class women experienced upgraded occupational achievements across birth cohorts in conjunction with educational expansion. Conversely, upper-class women exhibited consistently lower occupational achievements, especially those becoming mothers at a comparatively younger age, facing a higher risk of intergenerational downward mobility. Notably, the poorer labor market achievements of recent generations of upper-class women compared to the previous generations already emerged at labor market entry, suggesting that adverse self-selection mechanisms in early motherhood might be largely responsible for Italian women’s greater overall relative mobility. In Italy, women’s higher social mobility than men’s more likely reflects persistent traditional work–family choices among the better-off than a signal of growing equality of opportunity.