Social mobility is typically operationalized by using percentiles of income and then comparing:
1) Percentile of father's income at a specific age, typically 30
2) Percentile of children's income at that same age.
The more those differ, either up or down, the more social mobility there is supposed to be in that society.
I personally do not find the concept very useful because:
1) Income changes quite a lot in a person's lifetime, particularly age 20-40.
2) Economic growth increases material standard of living far more than moving up the income percentile.
3) Social mobility is zero-sum. If one person goes up, another person must go down.
4) Looking across multiple generations lowers the level of social mobility radically. Focusing on only 2 generations leads to a lot of noise. But it is very hard to get good data across many generations. You can see more on this here:
Very interesting. Since the word is going to be in your book title, I assume you will stress how you are using it more about rising the tide than about the relative height of the various boats.
This is a really useful framing of the issue.
On mobility, isn’t that determined more by movement between categories than by individual increases in income?
Thanks.
Social mobility is typically operationalized by using percentiles of income and then comparing:
1) Percentile of father's income at a specific age, typically 30
2) Percentile of children's income at that same age.
The more those differ, either up or down, the more social mobility there is supposed to be in that society.
I personally do not find the concept very useful because:
1) Income changes quite a lot in a person's lifetime, particularly age 20-40.
2) Economic growth increases material standard of living far more than moving up the income percentile.
3) Social mobility is zero-sum. If one person goes up, another person must go down.
4) Looking across multiple generations lowers the level of social mobility radically. Focusing on only 2 generations leads to a lot of noise. But it is very hard to get good data across many generations. You can see more on this here:
https://techratchet.com/2020/03/05/book-summary-the-son-also-rises-surnames-and-the-history-of-social-mobility-by-gregory-clarke/
Very interesting. Since the word is going to be in your book title, I assume you will stress how you are using it more about rising the tide than about the relative height of the various boats.