Social mobility can take different forms, and people can experience different types of mobility in different stages of their lives. The types of mobilities are independent of one another and can often overlap. They are only distinguished for the purpose of analysis.

1. Horizontal mobility

This occurs when a person changes their occupation but their overall social standing remains unchanged. For example, if a doctor goes from practicing medicine to teaching in a medical school, the occupation’s changed but their prestige and social standing likely remain the same. Sorokin describes horizontal mobility as a change in religious, territorial, political, or other horizontal shifts with no change in the vertical position.

2. Vertical mobility

This refers to a change in the occupational, political, or religious status of a person that causes a change in their societal position. An individual moves from one social stratum to another. Vertical mobility can be ascending or descending.

Ascending involves an individual moving from a group in a lower stratum to a higher one or the creation of a similar group with a higher societal position, instead of side by side with its existing group. Descending mobility occurs, for example, when a businessman incurs losses in his business and is forced to declare bankruptcy, resulting in a move to a lower stratum of society.

Vertical mobility can be the result of a range of social factors and processes. The possible reasons for downward mobility include migration and displacement, chronic mental and physical illnesses, and socio-economic crises.

In India, occupational, political, and economic vertical social mobility is determined by birth, whereas in the United States, 38.8 per cent of the captains of industry and finance, in the early period and 19.6 per cent in the present generation started poor. In caste societies like India, there was no vertical social mobility for thousands of years. The histories of Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, Medieval Europe, and so on show the existence of a vertical social mobility much more intensive than that of the Indian caste-society. Though not entirely absent in India, vertical social mobility is rare.

According to M.N Srinivas,  Jaat’s and Yadav’s though low in caste are dominant in various regions of India, in his concept of Sanskritization he also explains how a person can move vertically upwards in strata by following the  prescribed ways of living followed by upper castes.

Structural changes in closed system can be brought about even by,

1. Acquiring political power, as Mauryan did in ancient India who were low castes and later proved to be greatest of kings.
2. Acquiring expertise and skills it has been found that
3. Geographical movement-move from one region to another and change in attribute and behavior to claim upper strata

In modern times vertical mobility is due to emergence of new occupations, modern education system, democracy, welfare state technology etc and all these brings a substantive structural change even in closed social system.

The social consequences of mobility, particularly of the vertical type, are difficult to measure. Some believe that large-scale mobility, both upward and downward, breaks down class structure, rendering a culture more uniform. Others argue that those who attempt to rise or maintain a higher position actually strengthen the class system, for they are likely to be concerned with enforcing class differences. Thus, some sociologists have suggested that class distinctions might be reduced not by individual mobility but by the achievement of social and economic equality for all.