1. Beyond the Diagonal Reference Model.
- Subjects
ECONOMIC mobility ,SOCIAL mobility ,SOCIAL impact ,RESIDENTIAL mobility ,ORTHOGRAPHIC projection ,NUMBER theory ,QUANTITATIVE research ,INTERGENERATIONAL mobility - Abstract
In recent years there has been an increase in the number of quantitative studies examining the consequences of individual-level socioeconomic mobility. Nearly all of these studies in sociology and demography have used Sobel's (1981; 1985) diagonal reference model. In this paperwe examine the mathematical properties of the Sobel model. We showthat, under plausible values of mobility effects, the diagonal reference model tends to generate results that implicitly force the mobility linear effect to zero. As such, the model has little advantage over Duncan's square additive model, which has been abandoned for similar reasons. We conclude with a caution to researchers interested in using the diagonal reference model for estimating the consequences of social mobility. The resulting estimated mobility effects are, in part, an artifact of the model and should be interpreted judiciously. In general, when using the technique researchers should decompose the mobility parameters using orthogonal projection, which will reveal the potentially strong assumptions underlying the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019