Social Mobility

  • Gary Solon
  • Raj Chetty
  • Florencia Torche

Leaders: Raj Chetty, Gary Solon, Florencia Torche

The purpose of the Social Mobility RG is to develop and exploit new administrative sources for measuring mobility and the effects of policy on mobility out of poverty. This research group is doing so by (a) providing comprehensive analyses of intergenerational mobility based on linked administrative data from U.S. tax returns, W-2s, and other sources, and (b) developing a new infrastructure for monitoring social mobility, dubbed the American Opportunity Study, that is based on linking census and other administrative data. Here’s a sampling of projects:

Small place estimates: The Equal Opportunity Project, led by Raj Chetty, uses tax return data to monitor opportunities for mobility out of poverty. In one of the new lines of analysis coming out of this project, the first round of results at the level of “commuting zones” are being redone at a more detailed level (e.g., census block level), thus allowing for even better inferences about the effects of place.

The American Opportunity Study: This research group is also collaborating with the Census Bureau to develop a new infrastructure for monitoring mobility that treats linked decennial census data as the spine on which other administrative data are hung.

Colleges and rising income inequality: Where do poor children go to attend college? The “Mobility Report Card” will convey the joint distribution of parent and student incomes for every Title IV institution in the United States.

The “absolute mobility” of the poor: What fraction of poor children grow up to earn more than their parents? Have rates of absolute upward mobility changed over time? This project develops a new method of estimating rates of absolute mobility for the 1940-1984 birth cohorts.

Intergenerational elasticities in the U.S.: There remains some debate about the size of intergenerational elasticities in the U.S. A rarely-used sample of 1987 tax data provides new evidence on U.S. elasticities.

Mobility - CPI Research

Title Author Media
How Class Works: Objective and Subjective Aspects of Class since the 1970s Michael Hout

How Class Works: Objective and Subjective Aspects of Class since the 1970s

Author: Michael Hout
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Date: 07/2008
Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, In Paik

Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?

Author: Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, In Paik
Publisher: American Journal of Sociology
Date: 03/2007
Social Class and Earnings Inequality Kim A. Weeden, Young-Mi Kim, Matthew Di Carlo, David B. Grusky

Social Class and Earnings Inequality

Author: Kim A. Weeden, Young-Mi Kim, Matthew Di Carlo, David B. Grusky
Publisher: American Behavioral Scientist
Date: 01/2007
Life-Cycle Variation in the Association between Current and Lifetime Earnings Steven Haider , Gary Solon

Life-Cycle Variation in the Association between Current and Lifetime Earnings

Author: Steven Haider , Gary Solon
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Date: 09/2005
The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes Mark S. Granovetter

The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes

Author: Mark S. Granovetter
Publisher: Journal of Economic Perspectives
Date: 01/2005

mobility - CPI Affiliates

Fiona Devine's picture Fiona Devine Head of Alliance Manchester Business School; Professor of Sociology
The University of Manchester
Hans-Peter Blossfeld Professor of Sociology
Bamberg University
Henryk Domanski's picture Henryk Domanski Professor, Director, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology
Polish Academy of Sciences
Hiroshi Ishida's picture Hiroshi Ishida Professor of Sociology, Institute of Social Sciences
University of Tokyo
Ineke Maas's picture Ineke Maas Associate Professor of Sociology; Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, VU University Amsterdam
Utrecht University

Pages

Mobility - Other Research

Title Author Media
The Rise of Intra-Occupational Wage Inequality in the United States, 1983 to 2002 Chang Kim, Hwan and Arthur Sakamoto

The Rise of Intra-Occupational Wage Inequality in the United States, 1983 to 2002

Author: Chang Kim, Hwan and Arthur Sakamoto
Publisher: American Sociological Review
Date:
Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique Frank Parkin

Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique

Author: Frank Parkin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Date:

***

Class, Status, Party Max Weber

Class, Status, Party

Author: Max Weber
Publisher: Routledge
Date:
Gender, Children, and Social Contact: The Effects of Childrearing for Men and Women Munch, Allison, Miller McPherson, and Lynn Smith-...

Gender, Children, and Social Contact: The Effects of Childrearing for Men and Women

Author: Munch, Allison, Miller McPherson, and Lynn Smith-...
Publisher: American Sociology Review
Date:
The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class Alvin W. Gouldner

The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class

Author: Alvin W. Gouldner
Publisher: Seabury Press
Date:

Mobility - Multimedia

Sorry, but no media items exist for this research group.