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In this paper, I conduct a novel comparison of intergenerational income mobility in Denmark and the United States, based on high‐quality administrative data for both countries. The results confirm that the United States is substantially less mobile than Denmark, but they also show that the differences in mobility are smaller than previously reported. Mobility differences are larger for family income than individual income. When the individual incomes of children are considered, mobility differences are smaller for daughters than for sons. I also show that the estimated intergenerational elasticity of income for Denmark is quite robust to whether taxes or public transfers are included in the income measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a political economy interpretation of the 'parliamentary coup' that took place in Paraguay in June 2012. It situates this analysis in the wider historical context of the protracted transition to democracy between 1989 and 2008, the rural class structure of the country, the changing character of contemporary agro-extractive capitalism, and the long-standing class struggle for redistributive land reform. By examining the Paraguayan agrarian reform impasse under the short-lived government of Fernando Lugo (2008-2012) through an 'interactive state/society' framework, this paper attempts to locate the sources of current social and political conflict in the country, and the demands of rival social groups. In doing so, the paper argues that the rise and fall of Lugo occurred in the context of structural legacies from the Stroessner era (1954-1989) that have remained largely unchanged and that coexist today with an expanding agro-extractivist development model. They lead to the conceptualization of the continued 'predatory' or 'oligarchic' state in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines university graduates' beliefs about how meritocratic socioeconomic status ( SES) attainment in U.S. society is for themselves (merit agency beliefs) and for most other people (merit societal beliefs), and how these distinct beliefs are differentially associated with labour market experiences and achievement-goal attitudes and expectations in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Data from a 10-month longitudinal study of 217 graduates from the 2013 class of a large public U.S. university were analysed using multilevel modelling. The results indicate that most participants optimistically expected to attain upward social mobility. Furthermore, participants' merit agency beliefs were reflective of their labour market prospects and experiences, and calibrated their achievement-goal attitudes and expectations. However, participants' merit societal beliefs were not associated with these labour market experiences and achievement-goal attitudes and expectations. The distinction between merit agency beliefs and merit societal beliefs may be motivationally beneficial by allowing individuals to continue striving toward the uncertain long-term goal pursuit of upward social mobility despite the short-term struggles and setbacks many young adults are likely to experience in the aftermath of the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the sources of differences in social mobility between the US and Denmark. Measured by income mobility, Denmark is a more mobile society, but not when measured by educational mobility. There are pronounced non-linearities in income and educational mobility in both countries. Greater Danish income mobility is largely a consequence of redistributional tax, transfer, and wage compression policies. While Danish social policies for children produce more favorable cognitive test scores for disadvantaged children, they do not translate into more favorable educational outcomes, partly because of disincentives to acquire education arising from the redistributional policies that increase income mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While membership in Catholic religious orders of women in the United States is declining, demographic data on religious orders worldwide show that growth and decline patterns vary significantly by continent. The data presented in this research note demonstrate a positive relationship between female opportunity in society and the decline of female religious orders, thereby supporting the argument that religious orders serve as avenues of social mobility for women. Since orders are growing in those nations with the smallest percentage of Catholics in the population, as well as with the smallest proportion of religious women, this paper concludes that the prognosis for the future of religious orders is not optimistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prospect of socioeconomic mobility has long been a prominent concept in American life; however, research has shown that economic inequality can weaken Americans' beliefs in the prospect of upward mobility for poorer individuals in their country. In one correlational study, two experimental studies, and an internal meta‐analysis, we extend this work by demonstrating that Americans' perceptions of inequality can also influence their beliefs about another form of mobility that is necessary in a truly mobile society: downward mobility for richer individuals. Specifically, we found that the more that Americans' perceptions of inequality in their country shifted toward extreme levels—toward the view that a small minority of the population holds a much greater proportion of the state's wealth than all other groups combined—the more likely they were to believe that both upward and downward mobility were unlikely. That is, they believed that social class groups in their country were largely ossified and impermeable, and thus that Americans were unlikely to move out of the groups they were born into. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for important motivational and behavioural outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on employees perspectives on mergers and acquisitions. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the United States economy and many business organizations underwent dramatic changes, often euphemistically referred to as "corporate restructuring." Previously unscathed sectors of the labor market--white-collar workers--suddenly faced corporate downsizing, two-tier labor markets, the increasing use of temporary workers, and outright layoffs. Cohorts of white- collar workers who had learned the mutual benefits of loyalty to a corporation were suddenly faced with shredded promises and shifting rules. These dislocations had occurred much earlier for blue-collar workers, but sociologists who employ a critical perspective suggest that social problems are not thus defined until they impinge on the privileges and status of the middle class. The socioeconomic developments of the 1980s and 1990s have seriously challenged the article of faith that the material lives in the United States inevitably improve year after year. Most significantly for this paper, the experience of job insecurity or downward mobility has perhaps hit hardest for those employees who have traditionally benefited most from a capitalistic economy-white-collar managers and workers. This is not to imply that such downward mobility or shifts in corporate loyalty are equivalent to the experiences of the working poor who face economic hardships, or similar to blue-collar workers who face devastated local economies because of plant closings.

Traditionally, the high rate of mobility in America has been linked to such negative consequences as disintegrating communities and alienation among the populace. Recent perspectives on mobility present a more complex image of the factors underlying a population "on the move" and a more benign view of the effects of mobility. In this article we provide a backdrop for these more recent perspectives by presenting an historical overview of American mobility which includes: the image of the mobile American throughout history; the stability of high mobility rates; the changing patterns of mobility and the implications of these changes; and, a demographic profile of who moves in America. In addition, we review past theories of why people move and the limited research on the consequences of mobility, especially in terms of community pathology. This historical review "sets the stage" for the current approaches to mobility that are presented within this issue of JSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is argued that past research on family structure and stratification processes affecting family members has obscured, both theoretically and empirically, the distinction between the achievement of socioeconomic status and social mobility. Certain methodological weaknesses of approaches to these issues which define mobility as the difference in social position between parent and child are discussed. Blau's and Duncan's (1967) model of the occupational achievement process in the United States is suggested as a framework, which avoids the pitfalls of past work, for use in analyzing the relationship between family type and mobility. Data on house-hold structure and the educational and occupational patterns of a sample of male household heads in Santiago, Chile in 1960 are used to replicate their model and determine the role of household type in this system of variables. The data reveal no relationship between status and household composition, although evidence is produced which is consistent with the view that members of extended households should be less "mobile. "Specifically, the data suggest that as criptive factors (father's occupation and father's education) are more influential determinants of the statuses attained by men from extended family households, whereas achievement factors (education and early job status) are more influential with regard to men from nuclear households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study which examined the impact of vertical social class mobility on family integration in the U.S. U.S. social scientists have published a mass of empirical data establishing the fact that social classes do exist in the country and, furthermore, that membership in a particular social class does tend to predict a wide range of behavior patterns from voting habits to kissing techniques. The study covers an investigation of 78 families. These family units were studied through a combination technique of having participant- observer papers written by student members of the families, using an outline provided by the writer. Interviews were conducted with students where further information seemed to be necessary. All of the cases were studied in the setting of a state university and reflected both patterns of vertical mobility and social class continuity. In general, families with social class continuity seem to have more stability and more sociological closeness than families in which either the entire group or some members of the group have been moving from one social class to another. The initial theory was based on the assumption that if social class is the basic variable which research implicitly assumes, then social class mobility must be one of the most powerful forces affecting family cohesion in U.S. culture.

Migrating to a new country is often associated with difficulties such as social isolation, financial strain, language barriers, and cultural differences. Less is known about how social mobility brought about by migration may be related to the emotional dispositions of immigrants (also referred to as subjective well-being). To examine this relationship, we utilize data from a representative sample of 1,268 first-generation immigrants from 80 different countries living in South Florida. Changes in perceived social mobility between the homeland and the United States-moving up and down the socioeconomic ladder-are indeed associated with differences in immigrants' negative dispositions. We draw from literature on expectations, social comparisons, and subjective class status to explain these findings. We do not find a statistically significant association between changes in socioeconomic status and positive dispositions, which may suggest that losses outweigh migration-related gains. Additionally, findings reveal that nondominant groups fare worse than Cubans (the dominant group in the region) with regard to dispositions. Social comparisons to the dominant ethnic group may explain this, as well as perceptions of relative deprivation experienced by groups not favored by immigration policies and underrepresented in social and economic institutions. We conclude by discussing implications on how negative emotional dispositions represent risk factors that could affect immigrants' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on Kingdon's Multiple Streams Approach ( MSA) to consider international, not just domestic, flows of policy. It is argued that using the MSA in conjunction with international policy transfer and mobility theories allows for a fuller explanation of the development of smart electricity metering policy in Australia. The MSA is based originally on empirical research within a single country - the USA - in the late 1970s, and all three of the 'streams' identified as important to policy change - problems, politics and policy - are conceptualized as domestic. While recent scholarship has broadened the application of the MSA beyond nation state boundaries, it is argued that there is scope to further develop such ideas. In particular, the notion of policy mobility is introduced to capture issues about the globalization of policy, the role of non-state actors and the material substance of policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conviction for drug possession blocks some of the most common pathways through which individuals from low income families achieve upward economic mobility in the United States, such as access to higher education, entry-level employment, and military service. These considerations are of growing importance because the number of drug-related arrests have nearly quadrupled since 1980. This article estimates the effect of a conviction for drug possession on earnings mobility using a sample of individuals born between 1980 and 1984, some of the first cohorts to come of age in the context of intensive U.S. drug criminalization and enforcement. To distinguish the effect of a drug conviction from the effect of drug use or general criminality, I compare mobility among individuals with drug convictions to control groups who self-report significant drug use and who have had interactions with the criminal justice system that did not lead to a drug conviction. I find that relative to these groups, a drug conviction reduces the probability of transitioning upward from various points in the lower half of the income distribution by 10-15 percentage points, or as much as 50%, and that these effects are substantially stronger for non-whites than for whites. These findings suggest that a policy of decriminalizing nonviolent drug possession would substantially increase intergenerational mobility among low income populations, and this effect should be weighed alongside more conventional costs and benefits in formulating optimal drug policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests that Americans underestimate wealth inequality in the United States and favor a more equal wealth distribution (Norton & Ariely, ). Does this pattern reflect ideological dynamics unique to the United States, or is the phenomenon evident in other developed economies-such as Australia? We assessed Australians' perceived and ideal wealth distributions and compared them to the actual wealth distribution. Although the United States and Australia differ in the degree of actual wealth inequality and in cultural narratives around economic mobility, the Australian data closely replicated the United States findings. Misperceptions of wealth inequality as well as preferences for more equal distributions may be common across developed economies. In addition, beliefs about wealth distribution only weakly predicted support for raising the minimum wage, suggesting that attitudes toward inequality may not translate into preferences for redistributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elite colleges have long been associated with socioeconomic reproduction, passing along elite social standing to children of middle and upper-middle socioeconomic status (SES) parents. How has that role changed during the expansion of American higher education over the past 50 years? Have elite colleges and universities also become providers of socioeconomic mobility? In this essay, I outline recent demographic, admissions, and financial aid changes at these institutions and compare both in-college experiences and college outcomes between low-SES and more-affluent students at elite colleges. I argue that although elite colleges and universities do include greater numbers of low-SES students than in earlier generations and have great potential for even further inclusion, they remain far from serving as broad engines of socioeconomic mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. After increasing sharply in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of high-poverty neighborhoods in the United States unexpectedly and dramatically declined in the 1990s. This article examines the roles that residential and income mobility played in this decline. Methods. Using geocoded data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study analyzes changes during the 1990s and early 2000s in: (1) patterns of residential mobility between high-poverty and lower-poverty neighborhoods; and (2) patterns of income mobility for residents who remained in high-poverty neighborhoods. Results. Both patterns of residential and income mobility changed in the 1990s and early 2000s. While patterns of residential migration to high-poverty neighborhoods were largely unchanged over this period, patterns of residential migration from high-poverty neighborhoods changed significantly, with poor individuals-especially poor blacks-becoming more likely to relocate from high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhoods. Patterns of income mobility for residents who remained in high-poverty neighborhoods also changed significantly, with nonpoor residents becoming less likely to become poor and poor residents becoming more likely to exit poverty. Conclusion. Poverty rates in high-poverty neighborhoods fell primarily because of the net upward income mobility of residents who remained in these neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine how immigrants from eastern Africa to the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area understand and navigate the U.S. color line and its implications for nonwhites. Although these immigrants are subject to constraints based on their racial status as black, they mobilize other intersecting aspects of their identities to manipulate racial classifications in the hopes of attaining upward mobility in the United States, even when doing so creates other social costs for them. Eastern African immigrants draw on their ethnicity and, among Muslim immigrants, their religion to differentiate themselves from African Americans, who occupy the lowest position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. In challenging their categorization as racially black and seeking to move up the racial hierarchy, Eastern African immigrants refine the color line to distinguish between African-American blacks and non-African-American blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

notes that because the larger black community has a culture that is oppositional to mainstream U.S. society, blacks who wish to maintain academic success and achieve upward socioeconomic mobility feel pressure to adopt a raceless identity. The purpose of this study is to examine whether a raceless identity leads to better educational outcomes for blacks in high school than does a nonraceless identity. Using data from the Maryland Adolescence Development In Context Study (MADICS), we create five profiles intended to capture blacks' connection to their race and determine whether racial/ethnic connections among blacks are associated with school achievement, educational aspirations, value attributed to schooling, or detachment from schooling. These links are assessed net of affective feelings about being black and beliefs about shared fate. The findings are not consistent with the racelessness perspective. Specifically, blacks in the race ambivalent and race similar profiles have higher achievement and educational aspirations, and attribute more value to schooling and are less detached from schooling than are those in the race neutral profile. Prior studies have overstated the extent to which racelessness helps achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the recent rise of poverty in U.S. suburbs, this study asks: What poor neighborhoods are most disadvantageous, those in the city or those in the suburbs? Building on recent urban sociological work demonstrating the importance of neighborhood organizations for the poor, we are concerned with one aspect of disadvantage-the lack of availability of organizational resources oriented toward the poor. By breaking down organizations into those that promote mobility versus those that help individuals meet their daily subsistence needs, we seek to explore potential variations in the type of disadvantage that may exist. We test whether poor urban or suburban neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived by breaking down organizations into three types: hardship organizations, educational organizations, and employment organizations. We use data from the 2000 U.S. County Business Patterns and the 2000 U.S. Census and test neighborhood deprivation using logistic regression models. We find that suburban poor neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived than are urban poor neighborhoods, especially with respect to organizations that promote upward mobility. Interesting racial and ethnic composition factors shape this more general finding. Our findings suggest that if a poor individual is to live in a poor neighborhood, with respect to access to organizational resources, he or she would be better off living in the central city. Suburban residence engenders isolation from organizations that will help meet one's daily needs and even more so from those offering opportunities for mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

America's reliance on automobile transportation has attracted the scorn of academics for decades. Automobiles, it is said, are dangerous to life and limb, environmentally unfriendly, and wasteful of space and resources. Moreover, say the critics, automobiles produce inefficient individualistic social behavior that balkanizes communities and shatters the otherwise cohesive nature of American life. This article examines the costs and benefits of U.S. automobile travel from a historic perspective. First, it compares the safety of automobile travel with the horse and steam-powered travel that preceded it. It then briefly addresses the changes wrought by American automobiles in terms of their impact on American life, economics, social mobility, and ecology. It concludes that the dangers of automobile use are substantially lower than the dangers posed by early horse-driven and steam-driven transportation methods, especially in terms of fatalities per mile. It finds that on a per-mile or per-trip basis, automobile travel is safer than virtually any other means of travel used popularly in U.S. history, and that the other contributions of automobile transportation have been seriously overlooked by transportation scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-depth interview data reveal that workplace context and the social characteristics of clients and coworkers play an important role in shaping how upwardly mobile individuals experience class at work. While respondents did discuss their working-class backgrounds as a liability, as might be expected, they also described ways in which they experience their backgrounds as an occupational asset. These findings challenge the notion of a linear relationship between class and culture, suggesting instead a complex, fluid relationship between class, culture, and occupation, where the “class” of a job does not necessarily determine the class culture needed for that job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are combined with local census data to examine single mothers' patterns and determinants of residential mobility between poor and nonpoor neighborhoods in the United States. Moving from a poor to a nonpoor neighborhood is facilitated by marrying and by obtaining employment and is impeded by age and home ownership. Even net of numerous controls, African American single mothers are substantially less likely to escape poor neighborhoods and significantly more likely to move into them than their non-Black counterparts. Neither receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children nor adult coresidence significantly reduces the likelihood that single mothers will move from a poor to a nonpoor neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion on ethnic enclave. Assimilation was once the grand theme of American immigration research. In the classic view, the immigrants arrived as ethnics, and the crucial questions involved the pace at which the newcomers and their children shed their home country identities and assumed the values and orientations of the country's core cultural group. Though it retains its defenders, assimilation theory no longer shapes the direction of current work on immigration to the U.S. Researchers have little faith in either the predictive power or the desirability of the straight-line trajectory of ethnic change inherent in the assimilationist view. More importantly, the research agenda has shifted, to focus on the mechanisms and potential for social mobility, now seen as the linchpin on which other facets of immigrant adaptation depend. The contemporary discussion about ethnic enterprise dates back to the early 1960s. However, the contours of contemporary sociological inquiry about ethnic enterprise have been shaped by a single publication that appeared more than 13 years ago.

Recent analysis of social mobility in Europe has suggested a pattern of recruitment to the upper positions in the stratification system which bears a more reasonable semblance to American society than formerly has been assumed. This has come as a surprise to many, since there exists in the United States a strong impression, not only that equality of opportunity exists, but that U.S. far excels others in this respect. Although the U.S. has for some time maintained a free educational system at the primary and secondary level, it has failed to eliminate class differences in type and amount of education. The more recent extension of education in Great Britain shows evidence of presenting the same problem. Both cases suggest that universal, free education is no panacea to the problem of unequal opportunity and utilization of manpower to maximum efficiency. Such factors as differences in socialization, economic resources, business ownership, knowledge concerning mobility skills, the placement position of the family, reproduction rates, and change in the occupational structure all continue to operate somewhat independently of the educational institution in sorting out youths for and provision of opportunity in the stratification system.

Functional losses, increased mobility, declining status ascription, and the ascendency of materialistic values, cited either singly or in concert, are frequently the identified causal agents and results of familial change. A reexamination of these factors suggests, however, that there are severe limitations in employing them as explanations of change. It is contended, moreover, that the current value predicament in American society does not point to a revolution in family values which other analyses have indicated. Rather, the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests increased interpenetration and interdependence between the family and the economic sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to document some aspects of housing discrimination, changing neighborhoods, and public schools in the U.S. The problem of segregated housing, discrimination in housing, and changing neighborhoods has been the existence of residential areas of homogenous status and class character in a society. Data are numerous confirming the use of education as a major vehicle for social mobility in the country. Put together, then, the mobility patterns of individuals, the use of the educational process as a major vehicle of mobility for one's children, the class character of schools, and the need to express one's status or status aspirations by one's area of residence, and an additional insight into the factors maintaining and breaking down the stability of status of residential neighborhoods is the result.

This article addresses the economic changes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin which have not been matched by appropriate changes in legal, political and financial institutions. The fundamental change in the state is mobility. And this means automobile. It is ease of movement that made metropolitan areas possible and it is ease of movement that will control their future. The number of automobile registrations in the state has grown from 44,255 in 1921 to 173,713 in 1940 to 325,409 in 1960. This leap forward in mobility made possible a far greater breadth of choice as to where one would locate. It brought to an end the need to cluster. One's place of employment plays a declining role in the family decision about place of residence. Similarly, the surge in automobile use had lessened the need for industry to locate on rail or water routes. Related to the increased economic unity and interdependence is an increased economic specialization among the municipalities of the state. This, too, grows out of the growth of mobility. The economic specialization refers to the kinds of land use on which the different cities and villages concentrate. The delicate grading of property specialization is possible only when there is a very large population to draw from. It is mobility which supplied that large population.

To what extent is occupational choice influenced by paternal occupation? At what occupational levels does a shift in occupation of sons and daughters most commonly occur? In terms of an occupational hierarchy, in what direction does occupational shift most often occur? These are the questions on which this study attempts to shed some light. The material for the study included information concerning the occupations of the fathers of a sample of Missouri youth who completed their high-school education in 116 small communities in 1939&ndash1940, and the youths' own occupations ten to twelve years later. The most significant shift was away from farming and agricultural pursuits toward the professions, clerical work, and business pursuits. A distinct tendency for subjects to gravitate toward the same occupational level as that of their fathers appeared. This tendency was most marked among the children of professional and white-collar workers and less so among children of manual workers. Nearly all persons occupied in farming were sons of farmers. Women showed a distinct tendency to marry into occupations at the same level as that of their fathers. Upward mobility, from lower status toward higher status occupations, was more marked than the reverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is being observed that social scientists have devoted relatively little attention to developing systematic techniques for assessing the presence or absence of the process of social mobility in the U.S. Most of the studies of mobility which have been reported have compared the occupations of adult males with that of their fathers, without paying attention to other factors that might be utilized in determining whether a person or family has been vertically mobile. This article will present a scheme for evaluating the existence of mobility patterns on the basis of three factors: occupation; education; and religious affiliation. Occupations are considered to be more important factor in determining social prestige than education or religion. Therefore, occupational mobility is arbitrarily assigned a greater weight in the index scheme than educational and religious mobility. A family's score of plus or minus two is considered as being socially mobile upward or downward. The index made possible the systematic determination of differences on the variable of social mobility among the cases studied. However, several inadequacies of the index are also presented.

We review recent social science research on the socioeconomic mobility of immigrants to the United States by focusing on the educational, occupational, and income attainments among immigrant adults, the first‐generation, and the educational attainment of their children, the New Second‐Generation. Existing research has identified significant inequalities in educational attainment between second‐generation Asian and Latinx immigrant groups. Researchers have also highlighted the importance of ethnic capital for mobility, but we find that they have largely proceeded with the assumption that co‐ethnic ties are easily available as a benefit for immigrants upon resettlement. We propose that future research on immigrant socioeconomic mobility should incorporate conceptual insights from economic and cultural sociology as well as use comparative ethnographic research designs to directly observe how ethnic capital operates to challenge or reinforce patterns of socioeconomic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]