The Concept of Statistical Freedom and its Application to Social Mobility.

In their pioneer work "Social Mobility in Britain" the authors describe as one of their main objects "an assessment of the amount and direction of social mobility in Great Britain since the end of the nineteenth century." The authors define three points on the scale of intensity of association: "Complete association," which occurs when all sons have the same social status as their fathers; "perfect association," existing when all sons, whatever the status of their parents, have equal chance of reaching a given status category; and "complete dissociation," which occurs when all sons have a status different from their fathers. Neither perfect nor complete association are likely to occur in practice. Consequently, the authors of the symposium propose to assess and interpret social mobility with the aid of the three indices and the tests of significance based upon them. The conclusions reached in the symposium may be correct. They are, however, given no support by the heavy statistical framework, unless the authors choose to define association in terms of the index.