Many studies on social mobility use operationalizations of social positions that do not take occupational upgrading into account. In order to estimate social mobility patterns net of occupational upgrading, I propose an operationalization involving administrative data to measure social positions by applying a percentile approach. Based on this measurement I calculate absolute and relative intergenerational mobility patterns.

Using this operationalization, I aim to answer the question of how far intergenerational mobility patterns have changed over time in West Germany. Therefore, I analyze the occupational data of 7,416 38- to 42-year-olds born between 1944 and 1978 belonging to the sixth starting cohort of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Compared to previous studies, I observe significantly higher rates of downward mobility. However, I do not find any cohort trends in absolute mobility rates and do not detect any changes in social fluidity patterns. I therefore conclude that there are no cohort trends in absolute or relative intergenerational mobility in West Germany, implying that it is not on its way to becoming a society of downward mobility. In contrast to previous studies, my results indicate high social fluidity and no changes in relative mobility over time. Hence, the picture of a rigid German social structure should be reconsidered.

关于社会流动性的许多研究都使用了不考虑职业升级的社会地位的可操作化。为了估算扣除职业升级后的社会流动模式，我提出了一种涉及行政数据的可操作性，以运用百分位数方法来衡量社会地位。基于此测量，我计算了绝对和相对的代际迁移率模式。

通过这种操作性，我的目的是回答西德州代际流动模式随时间变化多远的问题。因此，我分析了1944年至1978年之间出生的7,416名38至42岁的职业数据，这些数据属于美国国家教育小组研究（NEPS）的第六个出发队列。与以前的研究相比，我观察到向下运动的比率明显更高。但是，我没有发现绝对流动率的任何队列趋势，也没有发现社会流动性模式的任何变化。因此，我得出结论，在西德，绝对或相对的代际流动性没有任何同类趋势，这表明它尚未成为向下流动性社会的道路。与以前的研究相比，我的结果表明，社会流动性很高，相对流动性没有随时间变化的趋势。因此，应该重新考虑德国僵化的社会结构。