How Has Educational Expansion Shaped Social Mobility Trends in the United States?

Abstract

This contribution provides a long-term assessment of intergenerational social mobility trends in the United States across the 20th and early 21st century and assesses the determinants of those trends. In particular, we study how educational expansion has contributed to the observed changes in mobility opportunities for men across cohorts. Drawing on recently developed decomposition methods, we empirically identify the contribution of each of the multiple channels through which changing rates of educational participation shape mobility trends. We find that a modest but gradual increase in social class mobility can nearly exclusively be ascribed to an interaction known as the compositional effect, according to which the direct influence of social class backgrounds on social class destinations is lower among the growing number of individuals attaining higher levels of education. This dominant role of the compositional effect is also due to the fact that, despite pronounced changes in the distribution of education, class inequality in education has remained stable while class returns to education have shown no consistent trend. Our analyses also provide a cautionary tale about mistaking increasing levels of social class mobility for a general trend towards more fluidity in the United States. The impact of parental education on son's educational and class attainment has grown or remained stable, respectively. Here, the compositional effect pertaining to the direct association between parental education and son's class attainment counteracts a long-term trend of increasing inequality in educational attainment tied to parents' education.

Social Mobility in a High-Inequality Regime

“…the estimates presented here, which are sometimes only at borderline levels of significance, must be interpreted cautiously, but it is striking that our results are inconsistent with the prevailing view that class mobility has been increasing (e.g., Pfeffer and Hertel 2015) and that economic mobility has remained stable (e.g., Chetty et al 2014 because the study of intergenerational mobility had, until very recently, fallen out of fashion among u.S. sociologists, it is perhaps necessary to remind ourselves why we have historically cared about it. there are all manner of motives underlying the social scientific interest in mobility (see Grusky and Cumberworth [2010] for a review), but we mainly care about it because it speaks to the extent to which life chances depend on social class origins.…”

“…this line of reasoning led beller and Hout (2006, 28) to conclude that the rising share of u.S. 144 tHE ANNALS OF tHE AMERICAN ACADEMy men with college degrees is "one major reason for the declining correlation between fathers' and sons' occupations." In a recent u.S. study, Pfeffer and Hertel (2015) argued that class mobility increased gradually over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, an increase that is almost entirely attributable to a compositional effect of this sort (see breen [2010a] for a similar argument for England).…”

“…It is accordingly useful to consider the relatively few studies that have directly examined trends in occupational or class mobility during the post-takeoff period or some part of it (beller 2009;beller and Hout 2006;Pollak et al 2011;Pfeffer and Hertel 2015). Notably, Pollak et al (2011) have analyzed trends in social fluidity between 1962 and 2006, using data from several national surveys.…”

Socioeconomic differences in overweight and weight-related behaviors across adolescence and young adulthood: 10-year longitudinal findings from Project EAT

“…34 Lower perceived social mobility (examined as anticipated future social position as compared to current perceived social position with society) of Mexican adolescents living in poverty was associated with a range of weight-related behaviors, including fast food, soda, physical inactivity and screen time. 34 In the United States, there are concerns that social mobility is declining, and steps to increase social mobility are complex and involve attention to race, discrimination, job opportunities, home ownership, economic independence, and social capital 35,36 However, efforts to increase social mobility by increasing accessibility to postsecondary education for low SES youth has been recommended by others, 37 and based on the findings from this study, may have positive impacts on the weight-related health of young people.…”

Rebuilding Walls: Market Transition and Social Mobility in the Post-Socialist Societies of Europe

“…Although the overall association appears to be weakening, the mechanisms through which this change is occurring are less clear (see Breen and Luijkx 2004;Breen and Jonsson 2005). To be sure, educational expansion is associated with increased social fluidity (e.g., Pfeffer and Hertel 2015), but it is rather less obvious that the relationships between origin and educational attainment as well as educational attainment and destination are changing in ways consistent with the theory.…”