The Land of Opportunity? Trends in Social Mobility and Education in the United States

Hertel, Florian R.; Pfeffer, Fabian T.

doi:10.31235/osf.io/jzt9p

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Instead, it builds on Torche's findings by providing detail regarding the impact of advanced levels of parental education. These results are also consistent with previous research showing immobility in the professional-managerial classes linked to closure strategies among top-income earners (Hertel & Pfeffer, 2020;Mitnik et al, 2016).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 93%

Equalizing or Stratifying? Intergenerational Persistence across College Degrees

Manzoni

2021

The Journal of Higher Education

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The literature has shown inconsistent support for the equalization thesis, that is, the idea that a college degree erases the effect of social origin on socioeconomic destination, and suggested higher intergenerational persistence among advanced degree holders compared to those with bachelor's degrees. The present study sheds light on the origin-destination link by investigating the intergenerational association between parents' education and offspring's earnings, paying attention to parents' education relative to their children's. Drawing on large samples and multiple waves of data from the National Survey of College Graduates, this study also makes an empirical contribution by analyzing intergenerational persistence across degree types. For women, I find highest intergenerational persistence at the bachelor level, but little evidence of intergenerational association for any advanced degrees. For men, results show intergenerational persistence across educational groups. Differences across respondents holding different types of degree support a theory of intergenerational relative education advantage, in which the effect of parents' education on offspring's attainment varies depending on offspring's education relative to their parents. Educational and labor market-related factors do not change the overall picture.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 93%

Equalizing or Stratifying? Intergenerational Persistence across College Degrees

Manzoni

2021

The Journal of Higher Education

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“…This is based on the assumption that education is the single most important factor in status transmission and class reproduction outside of self-employment and farming (Blau and Duncan 1967;Featherman and Hauser 1978;Hout 1988;Ishida, Müller, and Ridge 1995;Treiman and Yip 1989). To explain changes in relative mobility, researchers often study the effects of declining inequality in educational opportunity (Beller and Hout 2006;Breen and Jonsson 2007;Erikson and Jonsson 1996;Jonsson and Erikson 2007), declining class returns on educational attainment (Torche and Ribeiro 2010), and the general rise in educational attainment (Hertel and Pfeffer 2016;Hout 1988;Pfeffer and Hertel 2015;Torche 2011Torche , 2016. These studies, however, focus on social mobility trends among cohorts rather than among countries.…”

Section: Educational Systems and Social Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relation between Inequality and Intergenerational Class Mobility in 39 Countries

Hertel

Groh-Samberg

2019

Am Sociol Rev

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We study the relationship between inter-class inequality and intergenerational class mobility across 39 countries. Previous research on the relationship between economic inequality and class mobility remains inconclusive, as studies have confounded intra- with between-class economic inequalities. We propose that between-class inequality across multiple dimensions accounts for the inverse relationship between inequality and mobility: the larger the resource distance between classes, the less likely it is that mobility from one to the other will occur. We consider inequality in terms of between-class differences in three areas—education, wages, and income—and in a composite measure. Building on sociological mobility theory, we argue that cross-country variation in mobility results, in part, from families adapting to different levels of between-class inequality. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find a negative correlation between inter-class inequality and social fluidity, with between-class inequality being a better predictor of mobility chances than conventional distributional measures. We also find that the resource distance between classes is negatively related to the strength of their intergenerational association for some off-diagonal origin and destination (OD) class combinations.

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“…And in France, though equalisation appears to be continuing, this is at a decreasing rate (Vallet, 2014: 15; 2020: 109). We would further be inclined to place the US in the same situation as these European nations, despite some inconsistency in findings on trends in relative rates (compare Mitnik et al, 2016 and Hertl and Pfeffer, 2020) and the lack of recent US-European comparative studies. There would at all events appear to be agreement that any increase in fluidity within the American class structure that may have occurred up to the mid-twentieth century has over more recent decades tended to weaken (and cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergenerational class mobility in industrial and post-industrial societies: Towards a general theory

Bukodi

Goldthorpe

2022

Rationality and Society

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A large body of often rather complex findings on intergenerational social mobility has by now come into existence but theoretical development has not kept pace. In this paper, focusing specifically on class mobility in European nations and the US, we aim, first of all, to identify the main empirical regularities that have emerged from research, making the now standard distinction between absolute and relative mobility. Next, we review previous theories of mobility, leading up to what we label as the liberal theory, and we note the difficulties now evident with the latter, associated with its functionalist basis. We then set out our own theory of intergenerational class mobility, grounded in the subjectively rational courses of action followed by the various actors involved. We seek to show how the empirical regularities described can in this way be accounted for, while pointing to additional evidence that supports the theory but also to ways in which it is open to further empirical test. Finally, we consider some more general implications of the theory and, on this basis, venture a number of – conditional – predictions on the future of class mobility in more advanced societies.

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The Land of Opportunity? Trends in Social Mobility and Education in the United States

Cited by 6 publications

References 66 publications

Equalizing or Stratifying? Intergenerational Persistence across College Degrees

Equalizing or Stratifying? Intergenerational Persistence across College Degrees

The Relation between Inequality and Intergenerational Class Mobility in 39 Countries

Intergenerational class mobility in industrial and post-industrial societies: Towards a general theory

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