A New Infrastructure for Monitoring Social Mobility in the United States

• Author: Timothy M. Smeeding,C. Matthew Snipp,David B. Grusky
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716214549941
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Date: 01 January 2015
• Subject Matter: Section I: The State of Knowledge about Mobility

ANNALS, AAPSS, 657, January 2015 63

DOI: 10.1177/0002716214549941

A New

Infrastructure

for Monitoring

Social Mobility

in the United

States

By

DAVID B. GRUSKY,

TIMOTHY M. SMEEDING,

and

C. MATTHEW SNIPP

549941ANN The Annals Of The American AcademyNEW INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MONITORING SOCIAL MOBILITY

research-article2014

The country’s capacity to monitor trends in social

mobility has languished since the last major survey on

U.S. social mobility was fielded in 1973. It is accord-

ingly difficult to evaluate recent concerns that social

mobility may be declining or to develop mobility policy

that is adequately informed by evidence. This article

presents a new initiative, dubbed the American

Opportunity Study (AOS), that would allow the country

to monitor social mobility efficiently and with great

accuracy. The AOS entails developing the country’s

capacity to link records across decennial censuses, the

American Community Survey, and administrative

sources. If an AOS of this sort were assembled, it would

open up new fields of social science inquiry; increase

opportunities for evidence-based policy on poverty,

mobility, child development, and labor markets; and

otherwise constitute a new social science resource with

much reach and impact.

Keywords: social mobility; economic mobility; occu-

pational mobility; panel data; administra-

tive data

As Richard Reeves notes in his introductory

essay, the commitment to equal opportu-

nity is such a fundamental feature of the U.S.

experiment with democracy that it shows up in

early drafts of the country’s founding docu-

ments, albeit mainly via abstract references to

the “independence” of individuals. This early

commitment, which has since been concretized

through various defining events in U.S. history

(e.g., the Civil War, World War II, the Civil

David B. Grusky is director of the Stanford Center on

Poverty and Inequality and Barbara Kimball Browning

Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at

Stanford University. His recent books include Social

Stratification (with Kate Weisshaar; Westview Press

2014), Occupy the Future (with Doug McAdam, Robert

Reich, and Debra Satz; Massachusetts Institute of

Technology Press 2013), The New Gilded Age (with

Tamar Kricheli-Katz; Stanford University Press 2012),

and The Great Recession (with Bruce Western and

Christopher Wimer; Russell Sage Foundation 2011).

64 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Rights movement), is now expressed in well-known tropes to the effect that (1)

material success should depend on ability and hard work alone; (2) each genera-

tion should enjoy material comforts exceeding those enjoyed by the preceding

generation; and (3) opportunities to get ahead should be conferred without

regard to color, creed, or social origins. Although the concepts of mobility and

opportunity cannot be equated, it is widely appreciated that mobility data pro-

vide suggestive evidence about the extent to which opportunities are equally

distributed, which is why most late-industrial countries have well-developed

systems for monitoring social mobility.

Given our country’s quite special commitment to equal opportunity, one might

imagine that we likewise have a well-developed infrastructure for monitoring

intergenerational mobility and for assessing labor market opportunities, just as

other late-industrial countries do. This is not the case. It is surprisingly difficult

to characterize trends in U.S. mobility because currently available surveys are

based on small samples and because contemporary administrative data are not as

accessible as one might like. This is a troubling state of affairs for a country that

was once a world leader in mobility studies. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United

States mounted two large-scale surveys of mobility (e.g., Blau and Duncan 1967;

Featherman and Hauser 1978), both of which were treated as templates for other

efforts throughout the world. The last such survey in the United States was

fielded in 1973 (Featherman and Hauser 1978). By contrast, most other late-

industrial countries have continued to monitor mobility with repeated cross-

sectional surveys (e.g., Japan), panel surveys (e.g., Germany), or register data

(e.g., Sweden).

In the four decades since our last mobility survey, U.S. society has changed in

profound ways, many of which may have affected the amount and patterns of

social mobility. It is not simply that income inequality has increased dramatically

during this period. In addition, a growing number of immigrants have arrived

from Mexico, Latin America, Asia, and Africa; women have entered the labor

Timothy M. Smeeding is the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and

Economics and was (until August 1, 2014) director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at

the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His recent publications include From Parents to

Children (coedited with John Ermisch and Markus Jäntti; Russell Sage Foundation 2012), The

American Welfare State: Laggard or Leader? (with Irv Garfinkel and Lee Rainwater; Oxford

University Press 2010), and Persistence, Privilege and Parenting (with Robert Erikson and

Markus Jäntti; Russell Sage Foundation 2011).

C. Matthew Snipp is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and

Sciences in the Department of Sociology and director of the Institute for Research in the Social

Science’s Secure Data Center at Stanford University. His current research and writing deals

with the methodology of racial measurement, changes in the social and economic well-being of

American ethnic minorities, and American Indian education.

NOTE: The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Institute for Research on

Poverty (at the University of Wisconsin–Madison) are both partly supported by grants from the

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for

Planning and Evaluation (and awarded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service

Administration). The opinions expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not rep-

resent those of the Department of Health and Human Services.