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Path analysis for discrete variables: the role of education in social mobility

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  • Jouni Kuha
  • John H. Goldthorpe

Abstract

Summary. An important open question in sociology with obvious policy implications is how to assess the magnitude of the effect of educational attainment on intergenerational social mobility. To examine this, we propose a general method of path analysis, which can be used to estimate direct and indirect effects even in systems where some of the variables are categorical. It provides an additive decomposition of total effects which is exact when the effects are expressed as mean differences, and approximate but typically quite accurate for other measures of association such as log‐odds‐ratios. Estimates of the effects and their standard errors can be calculated by using standard output for fitted models. The method is illustrated by an analysis of British survey data on social mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Jouni Kuha & John H. Goldthorpe, 2010. "Path analysis for discrete variables: the role of education in social mobility," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 173(2), pages 351-369, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:173:y:2010:i:2:p:351-369
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-985X.2009.00620.x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Stéphane Gregoir & Tristan‐Pierre Maury, 2013. "The Impact Of Social Housing On The Labour Market Status Of The Disabled," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(9), pages 1124-1138, September.
    2. Carolina V. Zuccotti, 2014. "Do parents matter? Occupational outcomes among ethnic minorities and British natives in England and Wales (2009-2010)," DoQSS Working Papers 14-05, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    3. Christiana Kartsonaki, 2024. "Some approximations to the path formula for some nonlinear models," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1433-1449, December.
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    5. Kuha, Jouni & Bukodi, Erzsébet & Goldthorpe, John H., 2021. "Mediation analysis for associations of categorical variables: the role of education in social class mobility in Britain," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110157, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Kuha, Jouni & Bukodi, Erzsebet & Goldthorpe, John H, 2019. "Mediation analysis for associations of categorical variables: The role of education in social class mobility in Britain," SocArXiv rm9qy, Center for Open Science.
    7. Mendolia, Silvia & Siminski, Peter, 2017. "Is education the mechanism through which family background affects economic outcomes? A generalised approach to mediation analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-12.
    8. Krisztián Pósch, 2021. "Testing Complex Social Theories With Causal Mediation Analysis and G-Computation: Toward a Better Way to Do Causal Structural Equation Modeling," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 50(3), pages 1376-1406, August.

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