Word.ws English Dictionary

upward mobility

upward mobility noun: ability to advance to better-paid or better-regarded social strata.

Noun

upward mobility (countable and uncountable, plural upward mobilities)

  1. Ability to advance to better-paid or better-regarded social strata.
    • “The whole notion of the American dream,” said Frank Levy, an M.I.T. economist, “described a mass upward mobility that is just a lot harder to achieve right now.”2012 October 24, David Leonhardt, quoting Frank Levy, “Standard of Living Is in the Shadows as Election Issue”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of upward mobility

pluralupward mobilities

Questions about upward mobility

What does upward mobility mean?
Upward mobility means ability to advance to better-paid or better-regarded social strata.
What part of speech is upward mobility?
Upward mobility is a noun.
What is the plural of upward mobility?
The plural of upward mobility is upward mobilities.

Words near upward mobility in the dictionary

  1. upward compatibility
  2. upward compatible
  3. upward lightning
  4. upward lightnings
  5. upward mobilities
  6. upward mobility
  7. upward of
  8. upward spiral
  9. upward spirals
  10. upward-facing dog
  11. upward-facing dogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: upward mobility (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “upward mobility.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/upward_mobility. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.