Political Mobility and Political Reproduction from Generation to Generation

The American creed stresses political equality and political involvement, but substantial political inequality still persists from one generation to the next. Despite the importance of political inequality, not enough is known about the mechanisms that reproduce it. Political socialization research has focused on the transmission of political attitudes and culture across generations, but it has paid scant attention to how family transfers of economic resources, human capital, and social capital reproduce and perpetuate unequal patterns of political involvement and political authority. This article argues that more attention should be paid to measuring the persistence of political identity, political participation, civic engagement, and political influence networks over time and across generations. Special attention should be devoted to learning more about how the passage of family resources (economic resources, human capital, social capital, and cultural capital) from parents to children reproduces political inequality and reduces the opportunity for political mobility. Current data sources fall far short of what is needed to answer these questions, but linking the proposed American Opportunity Study with public voting records and with the American National Election Studies would provide a rich and powerful dataset for studying them.