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This paper suggests that the mother's occupation as well as the father's occupation affect a daughter's occupational destination. (Author/EB)

Several recent papers have studied women's intergenerational occupational mobility as movement from father's to daughter's occupation. This paper suggests that mother's occupation also is an important dimension of this mobility process. Analysis of data from a national sample of women 30 to 44 in 1967 shows that, when controlling for age and race, a necessary and sufficient model of women `s intergenerational occupational mobility includes mother's as well as father's occupation. Whether or not the mother had an occupation outside the home and what occupation she held, given that she was employed, both affect daughter's occupational destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification researchers typically conceptualize mobility in terms of structural and circulatory components and most investigators argue that it is analytically necessary to disaggregate mobility into these component parts. This paper examines (a) the two bask justifications that have been offered for the utilization of this conceptual framework and (b) the methodology that is used to "separate" mobility into its constituent parts. This examination reveals that mobility researchers have either failed to conceptualize structural and circulation mobility in a meaningful fashion and/or have failed to decompose mobility successfully into structural and circulatory components. On the basis of this examination and its implications, it is argued that investigators should abandon the "structure vs. circulation" framework in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a model for the process of attaining occupational status and income, where change in attainment is generated by the creation of vacant positions in social structure. The distribution of attainments, or the structure of inequality, is assumed fixed antis described by a simple exponential or geometric distribution function (depending on whether attainment levels are assumed discrete or continuous). Persons leaving the labor force create chains of vacancies in this structure that present mobility opportunities for persons entering the labor force. The implications of the model for the attainment process derived from these considerations for status attainment research and stochastic models for job mobility are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes mobility rates for black and white men using life-history data on intragenerational mobility. Mobility Is linked to the process of occupational achievement. it is argued that job mobility Is generated by persons' attempts to maximize their status and Income. Since opportunities for better jobs will be fewer the higher the occupational achievement already attained, the rate of mobility will depend on time in the labor force. The mathematical formulation of this time dependency iv derived from a simple change model for the occupational achievement process.. With this formulation, a redefinition of time is possible and fob shifts in the redefined time scale can be described by a Poisson process. One component in the formulation of a realistic and theoretically meaningful stochastic model of mobility Is then obtained. The empirical analysis indicates that the proposed model describes the observed change in mobility rates over time reasonably well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Julius Wilson argues that the gains in employment and occupational status that blacks made during the 1960s bred class cleavages that did not exist within the black population prior to 1960. This paper presents a new analysis of data on inter- and intragenerational mobility of black men from the OCG surveys of 1962 and 1973 that supports Wilson's argument. Three important class effects of the type hypothesized by Wilson are found. First, class effects on intragenerational mobility between 1962 and 1973 were significant for blacks; these class effects were similar to class effects among whites. Second, class differences in intergenerational mobility increased between 1962 and 1973. Finally, upward mobility between 1962 and 1973 was greatest among men from the most advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. The analysis also reveals an important role for public-sector employment in both occupational upgrading among black men and the emergence of class cleavages within the black population. The public sector provided more high- and middle-status occupations for black men than did the private sector. On the other hand, the public sector was more selective in recruiting blacks from middle class and skilled manual backgrounds than was the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using January 1973 Current Population Survey data on white employer-changers, this paper examines by gender and age: (1) mobility between economic sectors and between male and female occupations; (2)factors influencing chances for leaving a sex-typical ,occupation and competitive sector industry; and (3) the effects of such moves on wage advancement chances, net of credentials and work histories. It finds that there are people who move across sector and across sex-typicality boundaries, but that individuals' credentials and work histories have little power to explain this mobility. Moving into the competitive sector depresses chances for wage gains, while moving out of this sector brings gains. Moves between typically male and typically female occupations, on the other hand, do no affect relative wage outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between intergenerational occupational mobility and family size; it focuses on the partition of cumulative fertility into two components intended and unintended births-that may respond differently to social and economic sources of influence. Four theoretical perspectives are drawn upon to set forth alternative predictions of the relationship between unintended and intended births for upwardly and downwardly mobile couples. The results of regression analyses of 1970 National Fertility Survey data lend support to Easterlin' s relative economic status hypothesis, which advances the expectation of a positive relationship between direction of mobility and fertility, although this pattern is observed only for unintended births. The implications of this finding for certain theories of fertility, as well as for the inconclusive nature of previous research into the mobility-fertility relationship, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal purposes of this paper are to introduce a more general area of application for a refreshing approach to occupational mobility (open systems), to illustrate the general open system approach with two currently existing alternative models including an explication of the two models' distinct representations of the process and to test each model's predictive accuracy for a given job system. The approach focuses on intragenerational occupational mobility in a continuously operative job system. One model views mobility in terms of manflows, the other as interrelated job vacancy moves. Application is to an internal labor market-a state police system. The data are continuous for 43 years (1927-1970). Both models are found to be quite accurate in predictions once stationarity was approximated: 1949.1970. This study along with other open system studies suggests that Markov chain models are more generally adequate than has been concluded from closed cohort analyses. The models have genera! applicability to job systems, whether or not formally organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that the vast majority of association in a career mobility table can be explained by fitting parameters for five distinct levels of persistence. The model that we propose fits better than competing specifications; it yields a set of easily interpreted coefficients; and it generates new insights into the mobility regime of American males. We find that the contours of persistence differ across the various levels of aggregation in the occupational structure. The dominant form of persistence is a "clustering of counts " on the main diagonal; however, in selected regions of the mobility table, the effects of higher-level forms of persistence (e.g., "stratum persistence") are also quite strong. These results can be understood in terms of the social processes that generate each form of persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of generation and country of origin on occupational mobility between 1880 and 1900 among a sample of U.S. white men. Father-to-son mobility is examined for males 5 to 14 years old in 1880, and career mobility is analyzed for men aged 25 to 34 in the same year. While generation and national-origin groups clearly differed in their occupational distributions at each date, we find minimal evidence of differences in overall opportunities or in the relationship between occupational origins and destinations. Thus, on the whole, generation and country of origin appear to have had little influence on the mobility process in the late 1800s. There is some evidence that the men in our sample, who were overwhelmingly of Northern and Western European heritage, gained occupationally from the incipient flow of migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current sociological models of job mobility suppress the intervening anion and information mechanisms that link structural constraints to job shifts. To remedy this, this paper joins core features of structural-mobility models to key elements of economic approaches to job change in an analysis of the employed worker's decision to search the market for a better job. The analysis highlights the complementarity of structural and action approaches by conceptualizing the forces governing the search decision in terms of the principal dimensions-opportunities and achievement gains-underlying job-mobility models. The basic framework is extended to include the quality of a worker `s initial screen of a prospective job as a mechanism that promotes search. The concepts of opportunities, gains, and screen quality are then used to explain male-female differences in mobility orientations. The empirical findings both reinforce structuralist assumptions and underscore the promise of applying to the study of mobility processes the kind of action approach recently advocated by Coleman (1986). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews several neo-Weberian ideas about social class for understanding pasterns of men's career mobility. Special attention is devoted to the non-Marxist concepts of social class advocated by Giddens, Sorokin, and Parkin. Further insights are provided by an analysis of data for 20,000 men in the experienced American civilian labor force. The data are fit with a log linear mode! and then further analyzed with multidimensional scaling techniques. The data analysis discloses three broad categories of social class that consist of farmers, manual, and non manual occupations. The findings also reveal further subdivisions in which professionals and skilled craft occupations form distinct classes within the nonmanual and manual categories. A third, much smaller, subdivision exists between semi-skilled operatives and unskilled laborers. These findings support neo-Weberian social class concepts. These results are also compared with Breiger's (1981) research on intergenerational mobility. This comparison shows that patterns in career mobility reveal a simpler picture of class structure than the eight class categories that Breiger reports for intergenerational mobility. The conceptual implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on the question of whether structural and institutional differences among countries produce distinct mobility patterns has often yielded negative results, finding little cross-national variation. Arguing for the merits of a positive approach, this study formulates specific hypotheses and provides statistical models to demonstrate variation among countries in occupational mobility, using national samples of adult men in the United States, England and Wales, Japan, Hungary, Poland, and Brazil. The results show distinct differences in the mobility patterns of these countries. Moreover, the cross-national variation in relative mobility is neither systematic nor universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the relationship between mathematical models and empirical data. It is informed that Larry Schroeder has offered some empirical evidence regarding the relationship between the length of time spent in an occupation and the probabilities of observing subsequent moves from that occupation. It is opined that an important point often overlooked is that not all mathematical models are intended to fit empirical data; not infrequently mathematical models are developed to work out the implications of postulates their authors themselves regard as counterfactual or at least dubious. It is concluded that the task for future empirical studies is not, as Schroeder seems to believe, to provide a clear-cut choice among competing models designed to explain observed associations between mobility and duration, but to determine the relative importance in various circumstances of the variables suggested by the different models. S. Spilerman has carried out such a study for the case of geographic mobility. But these variables must be directly measured if one is to determine empirically which of them are how important under what conditions.

Despite the theoretical importance of intragenerational mobility and its connection to intergenerational mobility, no study since the 1970s has documented trends in intragenerational occupational mobility. The present article fills this intellectual gap by presenting evidence of an increasing trend in intragenerational mobility in the United States from 1969 to 2011. We decompose the trend using a nested occupational classification scheme that distinguishes between disaggregated micro-classes and progressively more aggregated meso-classes, macro-classes, and manual and nonmanual sectors. Log-linear analysis reveals that mobility increased across the occupational structure at nearly all levels of aggregation, especially after the early 1990s. Controlling for structural changes in occupational distributions modifies, but does not substantially alter, these findings. Trends are qualitatively similar for men and women. We connect increasing mobility to other macro-economic trends dating back to the 1970s, including changing labor force composition, technologies, employment relations, and industrial structures. We reassert the sociological significance of intragenerational mobility and discuss how increasing variability in occupational transitions within careers may counteract or mask trends in intergenerational mobility, across occupations and across more broadly construed social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how firms shape labor markets and career paths using employee non-compete agreements. The sociology of work has overlooked non-competes, but data indicate that nearly half of technical professionals in the United States are asked to sign such employment contracts. Fearing loss of investments in talent and trade secrets, firms use non-competes to “strike back” against technical professionals’ increased mobility following the decline of internal labor markets. In-depth interviews with 52 randomly sampled patent holders in a single industry, coupled with a survey of 1,029 engineers across a variety of industries, reveal that ex-employees subject to non-competes are more likely to take career detours—that is, they involuntarily leave their technical field to avoid a potential lawsuit. Moreover, firms strategically manage the process of getting workers to sign such contracts, waiting for workers’ bargaining position to weaken. These findings inform our understanding of the social organization of work in the knowledge economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Young American workers typically change employers many times in the course of establishing their careers. This article examines the consequences of this mobility for wage inequalities between and among men and women. Using multilevel modeling and data from the 1979 to 2002 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), I disentangle the various ways in which mobility shapes the trajectories of wage growth. Findings caution against accepting the adequacy of prevalent economic models of mobility—models that tend to isolate individual workers' moves from broader patterns of work history and that treat mobility as a decontextualized individual choice. Although workers who frequently switch employers generally end up earning less than their more-stable counterparts, the type, timing, and relative level of changes strongly affect the ultimate wage differential. Differences in the degree of men's and women's labor-force attachment and family circumstances are also influential. Workers who are less attached to the labor force benefit less from changing employers, and women who are married or have children also tend to experience less-favorable mobility-wage outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late Soviet and post- Soviet Russia using data from six surveys. Belying claims that class differences did not matter in the Soviet Union, the authors find that social origin did affect Occupational opportunity during Russia`s Soviet period. But the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations, Men and women were equally constrained by their social origin, even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods. As the economic transformation took hold, fewer Russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile. Political and economic transition, not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones, strengthened the association between origins and destinations. Career mobility during the 1990s took the form ofa regression toward origins, as workers who had the most upward mobility during the Soviet era lost the most in the transition to markets, abetting the reproduction of the class structure across generations as they fell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on the market transition in reform-era China has missed the direct link between individuals' labor market history and individuals' labor market outcome. A typology of workers is developed based on individuals' labor market histories, and a model of selective mobility of workers from the state sector to the market sector is offered as an explanation for higher earnings returns to education in the market sector. Analysis of data from an urban survey in China reveals that commonly observed higher earnings returns to education in the market sector are limited only to recent market entrants, and that early market entrants resemble state workers in both their level of earnings and returns to education. These results challenge the prevailing wisdom that education is necessarily more highly rewarded in the market sector. Thus it is concluded that higher returns to education in the market sector should not be construed as being caused by marketization per se, and instead that the sorting process of workers in labor markets helps explain the sectoral differentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial mismatch hypothesis argues that residential segregation and job decentralization combine to adversely affect the employment opportunities of minorities. While employment is increasingly located outside of central cities, residential segregation prevents minorities from moving closer to suburban jobs. Although this hypothesis has intuitive appeal, there is little consensus regarding its empirical validity. This study (1) constructs detailed geographic measures of changes in employment opportunities, (2) estimates a fixed-effects model of changes in the unemployment rate over time, and (3) accounts for spatial correlation in the error term. Neighborhood-level employment data from 1980 and 1990 are used to measure changes in the distance to jobs from census tracts in the Detroit and Chicago metropolitan areas. In both cities, the decentralization of employment and the loss of manufacturing jobs resulted in substantial changes in the spatial distribution of employment. The empirical results indicate that a decline in the spatial proximity to employment is associated with an increase in the unemployment rate for blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between industrial sector and career mobility is reexamined. It is argued that one must separate stayers and movers when studying career mobility. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men and from the March 1981 Current Population Survey are employed. Two industrial sector models are tested, and are compared with a blue-collar vs. white-collar dichotomy. Industrial sector is shown to have only a modest impact on career mobility: Industrial sector is no more important for blacks and women than for white men. For all groups, collar color inhibits career mobility significantly more than does industrial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study asks whether the core achievement variables, Father's Occupation, Educational Attainment, and Respondent's Occupation affect a variety of attitudes and behaviors. Forty-nine items from the 1972-1980 cumulative NORC General Social Survey were analyzed. The major conclusions are: (1) There is no evidence that these attitudes are affected by "sheer" or "score" occupational mobility, status consistency. or "return on investment" psychology. (2) Prestige stratum of Father's Occupation has no net association with any of the 49 items, but people from farm backgrounds tend to be more conservative as adults. (3) Respondent's occupational stratum has nontrivial associations wish about one-third of the items hut the magnitudes are small and the associations tire concentrated in two clusters, cynicism and job-related topics. (4) Education is clearly the most pervasive net predictor. (5) All in all, the notion of powerful "class cultures' receives little support from these [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the role of the firm in women's job mobility using a dynamic approach. Rates of women's job to job transitions are analyzed with a multivariate, stochastic model. The data are employment histories derived from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women (1968-1973). The results demonstrate the significance and the advantages of firm-internal labor markets in women's employment. First, the process of job mobility differs greatly within and between employers. Voluntary job changes made between employers rely on observable job rewards and general individual resources. Shifts within a firm depend largely on a woman's age and job duration, signifying the importance of seniority and job-specific resources in determining promotions. Second, jobs in firm-internal labor markets offer higher wages and socioeconomic status to women than other jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Canadian Mobility Study and from the OCGJ study, we compare occupational mobility in Canada and the United Stales for males who were 16 years of age between 1924 and 1953. The data are coded into six comparable occupational groupings and the problems involved in doing this are discussed. The analysis of trends is carried out both within and between countries. Using log-linear models, we find that there is no trend in mobility in either country and no difference in mobility between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been no change over time in the relative mobility chances of American men whose fathers held different occupations. Changes in the occupational structure are the only source of systematic variation in rates of intergenerational occupational mobility. Based on this assumption, we have constructed detailed tables of the occupational mobility of U. S. men in 1952, 1962 and 1972. Both between and within cohorts, systematic trends appear which include increasing upward mobility, decreasing downward mobility and, by some measures, a weakening of the relationship between father's and son`s occupations. At least for men in the U. S., the shifting occupational structure is the driving force and the problematic issue in changing intergenerational mobility patterns. We suggest that these same ideas be applied in cross-societal research. If there be invariances in the mobility process across societies which match those across time within the U.S., then comparative mobility research should be reoriented to investigate the sources and consequences of transformations of the occupational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nationally representative sample provides the basis for a comparison of married men's and married women's intergenerational mobility in the United States; men's occupational mobility is compared with women's marriage mobility. Women are found to have greater mobility through marriage, both upward and downward, than men do through occupations, and women more readily cross the boundaries among the major status groupings of white-collar, blue-collar and farm. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to "inherit" their fathers' statuses and there is greater association between the statuses of fathers and sons than between the statuses of fathers and daughters. An analysis for historical trends in the data indicates little evidence for either increasing fluidity or rigidity in the mobility system of either sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a reanalysis of trend data on occupational mobility among men in the United States, we define ways in which movement among occupation groups across generation might be constant even when the occupational structure is changing. Our analysis suggests that no change has taken place in occupational mobility (as specified by our definition). Rather, the changing occupational distribution is, the major factor affecting patterns of inter- generational occupational mobility. This Implies the possibility of constructing occupational mobility tables for times when the age-specific occupation distribution Is known, but no mobility survey has been castled out. Moreover, rather than treating the underlying process of mobility as a variable in comparative research and the variation in the distribution of occupations as a disturbance, it may be more fruitful to treat transformations of the occupational structure as problematic in comparative mobility research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars recognize that labor market structure affects job mobility. However, existing research rarely considers the impact of structural change on mobility. I develop a model for how the size of organizational labor markets and the instability resulting from industry expansion, contraction, and equity reorganization influenced rates of internal mobility, external mobility, and unemployment during the industrial restructuring of the 1980s. Analysis of data from the Current Population Surveys, the Current Employment Statistics program, the Small Business Data Base, and the Mergers and Acquisitions database shows that structural change has predictable effects on job mobility and that labor market structure channels mobility in predictable ways. However, the results also show that the ability of labor market structure to buffer environmental turbulence was limited during the turbulent 1980s, and that the "flexible" character of American labor markets had important consequences for blue-collar and service workers in the American work force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between geographic mobility and the earnings of Hispanic men and white men using the 1980 Public Use Sample. Migration status and labor force participation status are treated as joint selection processes and are incorporated into the earnings models. Despite the distinctive social and residential profiles of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban men, results show that residence in a concentrated ethnic area deters migration for all groups, even though they experience modest earnings penalties. Residence in a concentrated ethnic area is not related to labor force participation. The earnings returns to migration are negligible, at least over the short term. Because much research on the Hispanic population has documented differences according to national origin, it is noteworthy that our finding shows similar effects of residence in concentrated ethnic areas on migration probabilities and only trivial effects of migration on earnings for all groups. However, consistent with prior research on economic inequality, the effects of residence in an area of ethnic concentration and area wage rates on earnings differed among Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All firms operate in at least two markets: the product market and the labor market. I investigate the relationship between characteristics of these two markets by examining the effects of product market (industrial) characteristics on job mobility in labor markets. Informed by a theoretical model in which employer personnel strategies mediate the relationship between industrial characteristics and job mobility rates, hypotheses are formulated concerning the effects of six industrial characteristics -- concentration levels, conglomerate domination, labor intensity, growth rates, wage levels, and average establishment size -- on four types of job mobility -- involuntary exits, quits, intra-firm moves, and upward authority moves. Among the findings are: (1) quit rates, intra-firm mobility rates, and upward authority mobility rates are low in high wage industries; (2) labor intensive industries have high involuntary exit rates and low inter- and intra-firm mobility rates; and (3) the effects of industry growth on job mobility vary depending on whether growth occurs through the emergence of new firma or the increasing size of existing firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microlevel mobility research argues that job changes depend on the job seeker's social network and social ties. Job seekers find better jobs by contacting persons with superior knowledge and influence. These contact persons are usually others with whom the job seeker has only weak ties. Life history data from Germany demonstrate the necessity of considering the multidimensional nature of social ties and the interaction between social ties and status of prior job when predicting job mobility. Results suggest some modification of micromobility theory because individuals with high status prior jobs benefit from weak social ties, whereas individuals with low status prior jobs do not.

This study examines the relationship between the processes of occupational mobility and persistence. Using manuscript census data from Indianapolis, 1850-1860, I assess the importance of selection effects on the likelihood of upward or downward mobility and on the socioeconomic status achieved by 1860, relative to 1850 origin status. Alternative speculations have argued that out-migrants either constituted a sort of "permanent floating proletariat" (and therefore were distinctly unsuccessful in terms of occupational advancement), or were particularly aggressive entrepreneurs (and therefore likely to be among the most successful). As an indirect test of these hypotheses, mobility and persistence were modeled as joint outcomes influenced by a common set of "unobserved" variables. The analysis of Indianapolis data shows that the sorting processes of occupational mobility and nonpersistence were affected by a similar set of observed characteristics, but that unmeasured variables exerted no net effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of authors on the article "Occupational Mobility and Social Class: Insights From Men's Career Mobility," by scholar C. Matthew Snipp. Empirical investigation of the social class structure of occupational mobility has been a prominent concern of several recent studies. Snipp presents and applies a strategy for linking log-linear "levels" models with clustering and smallest-space techniques in exploratory efforts to locate the class boundaries of career mobility for a sample of American men. As an explicit test of the five-class aggregation that emerged from his exploratory procedures, Snipp presents in a table in his article a series of comparisons of alternative models of career mobility. He argues that the results favor his five-class structure on the grounds of parsimony. We offer documentation for our claims that the category labeling in Snipp's data table is incorrect, that the key numbers in Snipp's table are incorrect as published, and that the corrected version of the table does not support Snipp's application of his exploratory strategy. At issue here is the correctness of the data analysis underlying Snipp's test of his strategy. We divide our discussion into concerns with data, models, and interpretation.

The relatively neglected process of career mobility offers a fruitful starting point for the comparative analysis of class and social structures of advanced capitalist societies. It is argued that the predominant forms of educational systems and forms of labor market segmentation in a society should have consequences for the structuring of career mobility. Empirical analysis is carried out in four steps for the three nations compared: Austria, France, and the United States. First, summary measures on total volume and direction of career mobility are presented; second, how structural positions (identified by use of a multidimensional classification) are connected to each other in terms of career mobility is explored; third, the main shifts in the distribution of men between entry to the labor force and time of inquiry are described; fourth, the flows of mobility between the several positions are analyzed in detail. Each of these types of analysis shows considerable differences among the three nations, differences that are related to the prevailing mechanisms of stratification and labor segmentation in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on intragenerational social mobility. D.D. McFarland in one of his articles opined that intragenerational social mobility rates would decline over time. That the expected effect of duration on the probability of mobility is uncertain can be seen from an economic model of occupational mobility in which a change in occupation depends on the expected benefits net of any costs attributable to the change. It is informed that in addition to the stochastic model applicable to heterogeneous populations developed by McFarland, there are behavioral economic reasons to expect a relationship between duration and social mobility. It is opined that a more complete modeling of employee and employer behavior is required before definitive hypotheses regarding the effects of duration on occupational mobility can be posited and tested. It is concluded that the effect of duration of residence on occupational mobility is a phenomenon which deserves further study. More importantly is the need to construct a behavioral model of mobility, based on sociological or economic theory, which is capable of untangling the offsetting tendencies of duration to increase or decrease subsequent probabilities of changing occupations.

In the article, the authors comment on the article "Structural Mobility, Circulation Mobility and Analysis of Occupational Mobility: A Conceptual Mismatch," by Michael E. Sobel, published in the October 1983 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." According to the authors, Sobel has called for "abandonment of the structure vs. circulation framework" in social mobility studies. He claims that even under the correct interpretation of the intergenerational mobility table--that is, in terms of origin and destination distributions of sons-neither the models of statistical independence nor the traditional indices correctly account for structural and circulation mobility. Commenting on Sobel's conclusion, the authors show that its derivation is based on faulty logic, and therefore is inadmissible. Specifically, two logical fallacies are involved: hasty generalization and a non sequitur. Since Sobel defines circulation mobility residually, his focus is on evaluating solutions to the problem of accounting for structural mobility.