Intergenerational social mobility: The United States in comparative perspective
Intergenerational social mobility: The United States in comparative perspective
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DOI：
10.1353/foc.2006.0012
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发表时间：
2006-09-01
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Hout, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Beller, Emily;Hout, Michael
艾米丽·贝勒和迈克尔·豪特研究了美国社会流动性的趋势，特别是一个人的收入或职业在多大程度上取决于他或她父母的背景，以及经济增长的独立贡献。他们还将美国的社会流动性与其他国家进行了比较。他们的结论是，自1975年以来，经济增长放缓，增长集中在富人身上，这减缓了美国社会流动的速度。在衡量流动性时，经济学家倾向于看收入，社会学家则倾向于看职业。那些衡量职业流动性的人的共识是，今天父亲和儿子的职业之间的平均相关性在0.30到0.40之间，这意味着职业排名的大多数变化与社会出身无关。那些衡量收入流动性的人倾向于同意，在今天的美国，父亲和儿子的收入之间的弹性约为0.4，这意味着父母一代家庭之间收入差异的40%也表现在儿子一代的收入差异上。贝勒和豪特表明，职业流动性在20世纪70年代有所增加，与1940年代至1960年代相比，这一比例有所下降，但有证据表明，到1980年代和1990年代，这一比例已降至过去的水平。关于收入流动性的现有数据并没有显示出明显的长期趋势，但在20世纪80年代，经济不平等的加剧使家庭间的经济差异持续了更长的时间，从而使流动性变得更加重要。在国际比较中，美国在职业流动性方面处于中间地位，但在收入流动性方面排名靠后。研究人员利用流动性的变化来研究一个国家的政策制度，如教育或社会福利制度，是否可能推动这些结果。然而，关于跨国流动性差异的来源，学术界还没有达成共识。
Emily Beller and Michael Hout examine trends in U.S. social mobility, especially as it relates to the degree to which a person's income or occupation depends on his or her parents' background and to the independent contribution of economic growth. They also compare U.S. social mobility with that in other countries. They conclude that slower economic growth since 1975 and the concentration of that growth among the wealthy have slowed the pace of U.S. social mobility.In measuring mobility, economists tend to look at income and sociologists, occupation. The consensus among those measuring occupational mobility is that the average correlation between the occupations of fathers and sons today ranges from 0.30 to 0.40, meaning that most variation in the ranking of occupations is independent of social origins. Those measuring income mobility tend to agree that the elasticity between fathers' and sons' earnings in the United States today is about 0.4, meaning that 40 percent of the difference in incomes between families in the parents' generation also shows up in differences in incomes in the sons' generation.Beller and Hout show that occupational mobility increased during the 1970s, compared with the 1940s-1960s, but there is some evidence to suggest that by the 1980s and 1990s it had declined to past levels. Existing data on income mobility show no clear trends over time, but increases in economic inequality during the 1980s made mobility more consequential by making economic differences between families persist for a longer time.In international comparisons, the United States occupies a middle ground in occupational mobility but ranks lower in income mobility. Researchers have used the variation in mobility to study whether aspects of a country's policy regime, such as the educational or social welfare systems, might be driving these results. There is as yet, however, no scholarly consensus about the sources of cross-national differences in mobility.