SOCIAL SECURITY, SOCIAL INEQUALITY 199
Moreover, the shortage of labor also boosted upward occupational
mobility processes for almost all occupational groups, but for specially
skilled workers in particular. Approximately two out of every fi ve male
skilled workers traded their blue collars for white ones between 1950
and 1970, moving from the shop fl oor up to the preproduction or produc-
tion supervision levels.^20 Many children from working-class families were
able to climb a rung or two up the social ladder into lower or mid-rank
positions within the growing civil service during this time.^21 Switching
to these kinds of jobs (nine hundred thousand of which had been newly
created between 1950 and 1970) equaled a clear move up the social lad-
der from the lower to the middle class because of the high level of social
security and benefi ts enjoyed by the civil service. Simultaneously, the ex-
pansion of the educational system loosened the tight bond between social
background and educational achievement, even though there was less of
a reduction in class-based diff erences than in other European countries.^22
The upward mobility of these groups was facilitated by the emergence
of a new trifold lower class that had formed within the West German
work force in companies. It was comprised of expellees, refugees from
the Soviet Zone and the GDR, and foreign workers; the latter accounted
for the majority of labor migrants after the Berlin Wall had gone up, and
they also tended to take on low-skilled work.^23 Women only profi ted to a
very limited extent from this sustained demand for labor. Part-time work
did become a socially accepted professional model for married women in
the Federal Republic over the course of the 1960s, and more than a small
number of women managed to move from a socially disadvantageous
position as family workers into gainful employment. But, women’s em-
ployment stagnated at about 38 percent (1970), which was relatively low
in international comparison.
- In spite of the diminishing eff ects of market-related inequality on
daily life in West Germany and increasing opportunities for consumption
and career advancement, material inequality within West German society
remained astonishingly stable. As in most other West European societies,
West Germany experienced a modest reduction in economic inequality
over the course of the economic upswing. It rested primarily on the de-
tectable loss of status among affl uent demographic groups in the 1960s.
The percentage of total income earned by the highest-earning tenth of the
population sank from 34.6 percent in 1950 to 32 percent in 1971, while
the poorest-earning fi fth of the population made slight gains.^24 This mod-
erate decrease in income inequality indicates that performance-related
diff erentiation within the labor market was a consistently high priority.
The data related to the development of wealth inequality suggests a
less clear-cut picture. It indicates a much stronger concentration of as-