IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v657y2015i1p208-246.html

Potential Data Sources for a New Study of Social Mobility in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • John Robert Warren

Abstract

In this article I define the main criteria that ought to be considered in evaluating the costs and benefits of various data resources that might be used for a new study of social and economic mobility in the United States. These criteria include population definition and coverage, sample size, topical coverage, temporal issues, spatial issues, sustainability, financial expense, and privacy and data access. I use these criteria to evaluate the strengths and weakness of several possible data resources for a new study of mobility, including existing smaller-scale surveys, the Current Population Survey, the American Community Survey, linked administrative data, and a new stand-alone survey. No option is perfect, and all involve trade-offs. I conclude by recommending five possible designs that are particularly strong on the criteria listed above.

Suggested Citation

  • John Robert Warren, 2015. "Potential Data Sources for a New Study of Social Mobility in the United States," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 208-246, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:657:y:2015:i:1:p:208-246
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716214552773
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716214552773
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0002716214552773?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bhashkar Mazumder, 2005. "Fortunate Sons: New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Using Social Security Earnings Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 235-255, May.
    2. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    3. Nicholas Wolfinger, 1999. "Trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 36(3), pages 415-420, August.
    4. Robert Mare, 2011. "A Multigenerational View of Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(1), pages 1-23, February.
    5. David S. Johnson & Catherine Massey & Amy O’Hara, 2015. "The Opportunities and Challenges of Using Administrative Data Linkages to Evaluate Mobility," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 247-264, January.
    6. Mary Corcoran & Roger Gordon & Deborah Laren & Gary Solon, 1992. "The Association between Men's Economic Status and Their Family and Community Origins," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(4), pages 575-601.
    7. David B. Grusky & Timothy M. Smeeding & C. Matthew Snipp, 2015. "A New Infrastructure for Monitoring Social Mobility in the United States," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 63-82, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David B. Grusky & Timothy M. Smeeding & C. Matthew Snipp, 2015. "A New Infrastructure for Monitoring Social Mobility in the United States," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 63-82, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Timothy M. Smeeding, 2018. "The PSID in Research and Policy," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 680(1), pages 29-47, November.
    2. Anna Christina D'Addio, 2007. "Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage: Mobility or Immobility Across Generations?," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 52, OECD Publishing.
    3. Michael Hout, 2015. "A Summary of What We Know about Social Mobility," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 27-36, January.
    4. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2013. "Income mobility," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    5. Hsiu-Fen Hsu, 2021. "Intergenerational persistence in latent socioeconomic status: evidence from Taiwan," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(4), pages 753-772, December.
    6. Bühler Jonas & Erhardt Tamara & Häner-Müller Melanie & Schaltegger Christoph A., 2025. "Ist Blut dicker als Wasser? Wie die Familie den sozialen Aufstieg beeinflusst," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 26(1), pages 62-79.
    7. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Dahmann, Sarah C. & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zhu, Anna, 2022. "Intergenerational disadvantage: Learning about equal opportunity from social assistance receipt," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    8. Wei Zou & Ruiqi Ma, 2024. "An Extended Family Perspective on Intergenerational Human Capital Transmission in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 1101-1139, September.
    9. Islam, TM Tonmoy, 2013. "Childhood neighborhood conditions and the persistence of adult income," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 684-693.
    10. Gary Solon, 2018. "What Do We Know So Far about Multigenerational Mobility?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(612), pages 340-352, July.
    11. Jo Blanden, 2019. "Intergenerational income persistence," World of Labour, LISER, pages 176-176, January.
    12. Dodin, Majed & Findeisen, Sebastian & Henkel, Lukas & Sachs, Dominik & Schüle, Paul, 2024. "Social mobility in Germany," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    13. Chen, Wen-Hao & Ostrovsky, Yuri & Piraino, Patrizio, 2017. "Lifecycle variation, errors-in-variables bias and nonlinearities in intergenerational income transmission: new evidence from Canada," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-12.
    14. Gabriela Galassi & David Koll & Lukas Mayr, 2019. "The Intergenerational Correlation of Employment: Is There a Role for Work Culture?," Staff Working Papers 19-33, Bank of Canada.
    15. Jajtner, Katie & Wang, Yang, 2025. "The effects of earned income tax credits on intergenerational health mobility in the United States," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    16. Brea-Martinez, Gabriel, 2021. "The beneficial impact of mother’s work on children’s absolute income mobility, Southern Sweden (1947-2015)," SocArXiv c27s8, Center for Open Science.
    17. Joseph Ferrie & Catherine Massey & Jonathan Rothbaum, 2016. "Do Grandparents and Great-Grandparents Matter? Multigenerational Mobility in the US, 1910-2013," NBER Working Papers 22635, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Gouskova, Elena & Chiteji, Ngina & Stafford, Frank, 2010. "Estimating the intergenerational persistence of lifetime earnings with life course matching: Evidence from the PSID," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 592-597, June.
    19. Chenhong Peng & Paul Siu Fai Yip & Yik Wa Law, 2019. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and Returns to Education in Hong Kong: A Developed Society with High Economic Inequality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 133-156, May.
    20. repec:ehl:lserod:117588 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Liana E. Fox, 2016. "Parental Wealth and the Black–White Mobility Gap in the U.S," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(4), pages 706-723, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:657:y:2015:i:1:p:208-246. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.