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The ability to access online communication touches almost every institution and industry the American public interacts with including education, healthcare, social services, government, and news media. In fact, economic mobility (or the lack thereof) is a common theme in this year’s presidential campaign, yet the discussion often ignores the importance of affordable Internet access and digital skills for financial and social stability in favor of securing employment. The gap between those that can afford high-speed, at-home, online access (and possess the critical skills to navigate digital environments (Hobbs, 2010)) impacts virtually every aspect of one’s life, but the digital divide is often overlooked in these discussions. This omission contributes to the increasing disparity between the digital — and economic — “haves” and “have nots.” In this paper, using Charlotte, North Carolina as the case study, we pose the question: what is the relationship between upward economic mobility and the digital divide? Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States by population (Wilson, 2015) and recently formed a city-wide “digital inclusion taskforce” (comprised of organizations, civic and business leaders, academics, and local politicians). The taskforce worked to ensure that Google’s forthcoming fiber rollout includes neighborhoods affected by the digital divide. Using multiple data sets, we analyze and map the relationship between economic mobility and the digital divide in Charlotte. The first data set is from a recent report by Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Charlotte ranked 49th out of 50 cities in potential upward mobility for residents earning a median income within the bottom 25th percentile. Among the 100 largest counties in the U.S. by population, Mecklenburg County (where Charlotte resides) ranked 100 out of 100 for potential upward mobility among residents in the bottom 25th percentile for median income (Chetty & Hendren, 2015). The second data set is Charlotte’s Digital and Media Literacy Index (DML). This large-scale city-wide survey (MarketWise, Inc., 2012) mapped local residents' digital and media literacy. Based on our initial analyses, some of the residents with the lowest digital and media literacy scores also live in the most economically disadvantaged areas. A deeper and more comprehensive look into this relationship provides a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between digital inclusion and economic mobility. Further unpacking this issue will allow us to propose a set of policy recommendations for the city and county to pursue in developing economic and digital opportunities for all citizens, but specifically ones geared towards the depressed areas of the city and county. Preliminary recommendations include the following: 1) DML resources within a geographic area need to be considered when deploying a new social service. 2) Citizens from economically depressed areas will continue to be further removed from the economy without a supportive DML infrastructure. 3) Simply having broadband access is not sufficient in making sure citizens can use digital tools. 4) Economic mobility initiatives need to consider the availability of high speed Internet, the tools to access them, and the training in using them. References Chetty, R., & Hendren, N. (2015). The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility: Childhood Exposure Effects and County-Level Estimates. Retrieved from http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/files/nbhds_paper.pdf Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and media literacy: a plan of action : a white paper on the digital and media literacy recommendations of the Knight Commission on the information needs of communities in a democracy. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute. MarketWise, Inc. (2012). Knight School of Communication 2012 Digital and Media Literacy Survey of Adults in Mecklenburg County, NC Final Report (p. 76). Charlotte, NC: Knight School of Communication. Wilson, J. (2015, March 5). Charlotte ranks No. 2 among fastest-growing large cities, new U.S. Census report shows. Charlotte Business Journal.

Intention toward any occupational choice can be widely categorized as a rational choice process combined with a subjective attitude function. There is extensive literature dealing with the formation of intention toward entrepreneurship in adolescents, in particular as a result of either parental (vertical) transmission of social capital or network effects from peers or neighbours (the latter two being two different levels of horizontal transmission varying in proximity in terms of bonding and bridging). We contribute to this literature by considering the joint effect of all these three levels simultaneously, in order to avoid an underspecification of the model due to omission of important cultural factors. We hypothesize that such three levels identify a mechanism where the individual perception of their importance interacts with their objective characteristics. With data for second-year high-school students, and employing empirical triangulation through Logit and 3SLS methods, we find evidence for a strong parental effect and of secondary peer effects on student intention. We also detect clear endogenous effects from the neighbourhood and the overall cultural context. Moreover, entrepreneurship is confirmed to be perceived, even by students, as a buffer for unemployment and social mobility.

The research on social network analysis established the existence of class homophily, the tendency that personal networks are homogeneous in the class sense, as one of the governing patterns. This is explained via two main mechanisms: choice homophily and induced homophily. But the literature focused less on the question how can class boundaries be transgressed and what are the channels of class heterophily. This paper explores class heterophily on Croatian data acquired through position generator, which measures social capital (resources captured in social relations) by exploring the range of different occupational positions which are accessible to an individual (extensity index). Network variability is thereby taken as proxy for class composition of personal networks. The paper concludes that that political participation and sociability enable cross-class ties, since this offers an opportunity to meet and befriend people from all walks of life; and that people on the middle of the social hierarchy have the most diverse social networks. The hypotheses that social mobility can represent a vehicle for class heterophily; and that class heterophily is more pronounced in smaller settlements, where society networks show more overlap between social circles; were confirmed only partially, and require further investigation. These findings concern class boundaries related to the notion of choice homophily. As for induced homophily, the paper concludes that here too the boundaries are not watertight, as cultural omnivores have a wider range of class contacts.

Selective state grammar schools are the subject of sustained political debate surrounding issues of standards, education quality and social mobility, and yet they have received little academic scrutiny in geographies of education. Increasing numbers of young people are educated in selective settings in both the UK and globally. In this paper, we argue that some selective state schools are ‘elite’ spaces, whose alumni hold disproportionate power and sway. This paper examines the social geographies of girls in an elite grammar school in the Southeast of England, examining how classed and ethnic/racialized femininities are performed and enacted. The data are drawn from semi-structured photo-interviews and focus groups with 23 girls aged 13–14. The paper examines how the girls’ social geographies were forged by socio-psychic process of connection and differentiation. Class differences were abjected onto non-grammar school ‘others’, and poverty was viewed by some girls as a moral failing. The girls were avowedly open to ethnic, racial and religious diversity, which generated a cosmopolitan sensibility as a cultural resource. Nonetheless, subtle differences were reproduced through friendships, which along with being emotionally nurturing, were fraught and fractured in power. These differences can involve subtle hierarchical performances of ethnicity/region/race, which operated beyond the immediate conscious reflection of the girls at times, pointing to a ‘deeper domain’ (Philo and Parr, 2003) which can be a friction to allenging enduring relations of difference through the spatial contingency of encounter. Given the powerful positions these girls are likely to occupy in top professions, how they understand and perform class, gender, ethnicity/race and religion are crucial. This in-depth study has theoretical resonance to elite spaces beyond the specific context of the case-study school by illuminating processes through which specific and hierarchical subjectivities are forged in friendships and by identifying the ‘same’ and ‘other’.

Scholars are increasingly emphasizing the contradictory nature of schooling’s social effects, often blending Sen’s (2000) insights on education’s empowering role with critical sociological work on schooling and inequality (e.g. Majumdar and Mooij, 2011 , Morarji, 2014 ). This paper advances this literature through examining shifts in girls’ education in Bemni, Uttarakhand, India. The paper draws on two periods of ethnographic research – in 2003–2004 and between 2012 and 2017 – as a means of tracking long-term changes in the nature of the contradictions that young women experience. In the 1990s and early 2000s there was a marked increase in girls’ primary schooling in this village and Uttarakhand more broadly. But girls were largely excluded from secondary school, and patriarchal assumptions regarding women’s work remained largely unchallenged. By 2012, however, young women were participating in secondary education, seeking paid employment, and felt empowered by their schooling. Nevertheless, key challenges remained. Educated women experienced underemployment, relegation into less favoured university courses, and difficulties navigating marriage markets. In making these points, the paper underlines the value of holding the theoretical ideas of Sen (2000) alongside critical approaches to education, but it goes beyond existing work on the contradictions of education in two key ways. First, it highlights the experiences and voices of young women in the rural Global South, about whom there is currently a dearth of substantive material. I show that the contradictions associated with education among young women are sometimes different to those experienced by men in similar settings (e.g. Jeffrey et al., 2008 , Mains, 2012 ). Second, I argue that the contradictions associated with education can change over time within a single location – an observation that emerges from longitudinal ethnographic research of the type showcased here.

Homeownership and housing price appreciation are often framed as the real culprits behind yawning wealth inequality, which reduces social mobility and exposes non-homeowning millennials to structural inequality. In response, governments have introduced various homeownership policies, including long-term mortgages. This paper highlights South Korea’s public mortgages with very long terms of 40 years or more as one potential vehicle for addressing housing inequality. Rather than performing an econometric analysis on a policy that will not materialize until late 2021, the paper focuses on conducting a comprehensive literature review covering various national contexts. Next, the paper discusses the economic and financial implications of Korea’s ‘super-long-term public mortgages.’ To conclude, the paper suggests several financing solutions, ranging from a more advanced mortgage-backed securities market to a national fund drawing on public wealth. Through this holistic discussion, the paper hopes to trigger a vibrant discourse on policies to address housing inequality for young adults.

This paper studies how exclusive social groups shape upward mobility and whether inter-actions between low- and high-status peers can integrate the top rungs of the economic and social ladders. Our setting is Harvard in the 1920s and 1930s, where new groups of students arriving on campus encountered a social system centered on exclusive old boys’ clubs. Combining archival and Census records, we first show that students from prestigious private feeder schools are overrepresented in old boys’ clubs, while academic high achievers and ethnic minorities are almost completely absent. Club members earn 32% more than other students and are more likely to work in finance and join country clubs, both characteristic of the era’s elite. We then use random variation in room assignment to show that exposure to high-status peers expands gaps in college club membership, adult social club membership, and finance careers by high school type, with large positive effects for private school students and zero or negative effects for others. To conclude, we turn to more recent cohorts. We show that the link between exclusive college clubs and finance careers persists across the 20th century even as Harvard diversifies, and that elite university students from the highest-income families continue to out-earn their peers. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Based on responses in the General Social Survey, we construct an index that captures non-monetary qualities of occupations, such as respect, learning, and work hazards, relevant to the well-being of workers. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, we document that the children of richer US parents are more likely to select into occupations that rank higher in terms of this index. We rationalize this fact by introducing occupational choice with preferences over the intrinsic qualities of occupations into a standard theory of intergenerational mobility. Estimating the model allows us to infer the equivalent monetary compensation each worker receives from the intrinsic qualities of their chosen occupation. Earnings adjusted to reflect this additional compensation show substantially larger persistence of income from parents to children. Our model further predicts that the trends in the composition of labor demand in the US over the past three decades decreased intergenerational persistence, and also led to higher growth in the welfare of the average worker than that implied by observed earnings. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

This paper offers a comprehensive account of the intergenerational transmission of education across religious groups in Africa, home to some of the world’s largest Christian and Muslim communities. First, we use census data from 20 countries to construct new upward and downward religion-specific intergenerational mobility (IM) statistics. Christian boys and girls have much higher upward and lower downward mobility than Muslims and Animists. Muslims perform well only in a handful of countries where they are small minorities. Second, we trace the roots of these disparities. Although family structures differ across faiths, this variation explains only a small fraction of the observed IM inequities (roughly 12%). Inter-religious differences in occupational specialization and urban residence do not play any role. In contrast, regional features explain nearly half of the imbalances in educational mobility. Third, we isolate the causal impact of regions from spatial sorting exploiting information on children whose households moved when they were at different ages during childhood. Irrespective of the religious identity, regional exposure effects are present for all children moving before 12. Fourth, we map and characterize the religious IM gaps across thousands of African regions. Among numerous regional geographic, economic, and historical features, the district's Muslim share is the most important correlate. Children adhering to Islam underperform Christians in areas with substantial Muslim communities. Fifth, survey data reveal that Muslims display stronger in-group preferences and place a lower valuation on education. Our findings call for more research on the origins of religious segregation and the role of religion-specific, institutional, and social conventions on education and opportunity. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

This paper examines the impact of the SARS epidemic in 2003 on intergenerational mobility in China. Using large cross-city variation in SARS cases, our triple difference-in-differences estimates suggest that the SARS epidemic significantly increases the intergenerational transmission of education. Our results show that a one percent increase in the number of SARS cases leads to a 9.3 percent increase in the maternal intergeneration transmission coefficient. The effect of the SARS epidemic is stronger for admission to 4-year bachelor programmes and more concentrated in female students and students in large cities. This paper also investigates the potential mechanisms and finds that more highly educated mothers tend to be more engaged in children’s studies during the epidemic period when teachers are absent. These results convey the warning message that pandemics may reduce intergenerational mobility of education.

The rise of an extreme movement, which has consistently produced violence and hatred in Kosovar society for more than fifteen years, undoubtedly increases the curiosity of any researcher of social problems to deal with the study of this issue. Of course, the study of social problems is extremely complex, especially in this time of globalization and extraordinary social mobility, therefore, each time, the opportunities for debate remained open. The paper addresses a very problematic topic, but that belongs to the social topicality, and not only in Kosovar society as one of the societies in transition, but also quite prominent in the most developed countries, and with a long democratic tradition. It should be noted that Kosovo is not only going through an economic transition, but more than that, the political and cultural transition has taken a special place. It should be noted that society's approach to the state and politics is crucial and has a tremendous impact on the process of economic transition. The paper deals precisely with the tools and methods that Kosovar political parties have used and are using to seize power, where the focus is on populism and the spirit of hatred created during the two decades after the war in Kosovo.

Smart mobility aims to provide efficient, sustainable, and connected mobility solutions to congested urban centers. It is often assumed that smart mobility will benefit cities’ residents and improve overall accessibility. Nevertheless, smart-mobility strategies presuppose that transport users are digitally literate, autonomous, and can afford either public or private transportation. For the millions of citizens throughout the world who are affected by transport poverty, this is not the case. Transport poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon which is often overlooked in the legal literature. Yet, this specific type of poverty can limit individuals’ upward mobility and impede them from exercising social and economic rights. This paper explores the phenomenon of transport poverty and delves into the possibility of designing smart-mobility policies that include those affected by this type of poverty. It discusses existing or proposed policies of free public transit and explains why inclusive mobility should be regarded as a concretization of the right to equal treatment. This paper contributes to existing scholarship on smart cities, smart mobility, and fundamental rights with a novel interdisciplinary analysis of urban mobility. Furthermore, it draws attention to the need to design inclusive connected transport systems.

This paper studies the class attainment of a single group of migrants, the Southern Italians, to two destinations: Northern Italy and West Germany. It analyses whether the labour market trajectories vary among institutional contexts or follow the same integration pathway across different receiving societies. In doing so, this study expands the literature in two directions. On the one hand, it stresses the importance of macro-features of the host society for studying migrants' integration processes. On the other hand, it highlights similarities and differences between internal and international migration. The paper reports empirical analyses based on the Longitudinal Survey on Italian Households (ILHS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). The results show that the inclusion of Southern migrants, both internal and international, took place at lower levels of the class structure. The greater rigidity and the strong emphasis on vocational training of the German labour market pushed Southern migrants into the unskilled urban working class. In Northern Italy, by contrast, the possibility of entering the public sector facilitated their inclusion in the middle classes. Despite those differences, in both destinations, Southern migrants had fewer opportunities of upward social mobility than the native population.

This paper proposes a new method to distinguish structural from exchange mobility in status attainment models with interval endogenous variables. In order to measure structural mobility, the paper proposes to trace occupational and educational changes across generations using information provided by children about their fathers. The validity of the method is assessed by comparing the effects of father’s socio-economic status and education on son’s status and educational attainments, net of occupational upgrading and educational expansion, in five European countries: Britain, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Spain, using data from the 2005 EU-SILC survey. The results show that the effect of father’s on son’s ISEI weakens greatly in all countries after considering occupational upgrading, and that much of father’s influence over sons occurs by directing them towards occupations with good economic prospects. Useful extensions to the method are discussed in the conclusions.

The paper examines the relationship between tax evasion and individuals’ well-being by using a subjective question on life satisfaction in fourteen Central and Eastern European countries. The paper focuses on the role of institutions and social capital in molding this relationship. The results indicate that evading taxes is negatively associated with individuals’ life satisfaction. This negative relationship seems to be shaped by a positive perception of formal tax-related institutions and a high level of formal social capital. A similar analysis run for two generational groups, distinguished in terms of whether having had working experience during communism, yields further interesting results: while associational engagement (i.e. formal social capital) has a crucial role to the younger generation in the way they experience the relationship between evading tax and how satisfied they are with their life, for the older generation it is their social networks (i.e. informal social capital) that shape this relationship., The data used in the paper was financially supported by the ERC StG 240830 “Public Goods through Private Eyes” Project.

The paper investigates socio-economic gaps in the match between student quality and upper-secondary qualification quality using detailed individual-level linked administrative data from schools, colleges and tax authorities in England. Academic match is identified using a continuous measure defining undermatched, matched and overmatched students based on the distance between each student’s attainment in age 16 high-stake examinations and the median attainment of students who achieved a similar academic or vocational qualification. Students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are found to be more likely to be exposed to academic undermatch compared to their more advantaged peers and this effect is greater among the highest achieving students. The paper demonstrates that among the highest achieving students, 20% of the identified socio-economic gap in academic match can be explained by geographic differences, such as district deprivation and local Further Education opportunities. Further, the dominant 60% of the gap can be explained by differences in the school composition that students from differing backgrounds attend, such as the proportion of high achieving students and the proportion of disadvantaged students. Finally, although the effect of academic match in upper-secondary education on important individual outcomes, including university participation and labour market performance, in terms of earnings and employment probabilities at age 25, is imprecise, there are clear indications about the detrimental effect of academic undermatch on all these outcomes.

This paper contributes to research on daily mobility experience of (im)migrants in cities and expands the conceptualizations of mobility by examining intentionality and its relations to locality. Through place-based research on mobility and immobility of Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing, Queens, New York City, this paper explores: 1) mobility patterns of recent (im)migrants in an urban setting; 2) the constraints, resources and their coping strategies for everyday mobility; and 3) the dialectal relationship between voluntary and involuntary immobility, and between mobility and ethnic communities. This study reveals that immobility is not always the result of inaccessibility, but structural barriers in the broader society such as socioeconomic inequality and racial discrimination. Involuntary immobility encourages overdependence on locality. With its high place accessibility, Flushing provides (im)migrants with a plethora of ethnic mobile resources, as well as social networks and community resources. The relative immobility among Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing is compensated by the flows and movements of people, goods and information both at the local and transnational scale. The contrast between insider-ness and outsider-ness further enhances their attachment to the local community and discourages them from moving. Thus, locality mitigates involuntary immobility but paradoxically nurtures voluntary immobility that hinders the transfer of potential mobility to actual mobility, and physical mobility to social mobility. Without considering locality, stillness is easily mistaken for immobility; without considering intentionality, accessibility is easily equated to mobility. Therefore, solutions to transportation equity do not lie solely in transportation accessibility itself, but more broadly in individual capability, immigration policy, labor market equality and community development. Language: en

This paper explores minority access to higher education in Israel in general, and among the Negev Bedouin Arabs, in particular. The Negev Bedouin community has undergone major changes during the past 60 years, and has the lowest socio-economic level of any population group in Israel. Higher education plays a prominent role in determining a community's competitiveness in the world marketplace. In most societies, it is also recognized as a major avenue to greater economic rewards and social mobility, making it of vital importance to those groups on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder of society. The provision of public educational services to the Negev Bedouin, admissions procedures and standardized testing, financial assistance policies, and the socio-economic and political impact of higher education in Israel are examined in-depth. The paper concludes that the following structural and policy changes are needed to improve the access of the Negev Bedouin community to higher education: better quality elementary and secondary education, financial aid, removal of minimum age requirements, and culturally unbiased measures for admissions screening.

Since Becker's seminal 1964 book, Human Capital, human capital theory has been used to understand nearly all facets of inequality, including the determinants and evolution of cross-sectional income inequality as well as intergenerational mobility. Individual heterogeneity and market frictions play central roles in this discussion, with many policy analyses motivated by an effort to improve economic efficiency and/or reduce inequality. Economists have also recognized that human capital development begins upon conception and continues throughout the life course, taking place in families, schools, and the workplace. The papers in this special issue, presented at the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Conference in Chicago, represent work at the frontier of analyses of human capital and inequality, taking on a range of issues that have come to dominate recent discussions in economics. Most of the papers in this issue focus on higher education decisions and post-school lifecycle skill accumulation, considering the implications of important frictions in credit and/or labor markets, but others focus more on earlier investment choices, intergenerational mobility, and the evolution of cross-sectional inequality. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper aims to investigate a new determinant of the demand for children: upward mobility. Upward mobility can affect the demand for children in two opposite directions: upward mobility means more resources to spend on childbearing and increases the demand for children; it also lowers the need to rely on children for old-age support and this leads to lower demand for children. In this paper, we use the difference between the subject's self-evaluations of the future and current social class as the measure of upward mobility, and fertility desire to represent the demand for children. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, we find that upward mobility significantly increases the demand for children, and the results are robust across various model specifications (pooled data regression, Poisson regression, and IV regression). The effect is concentrated among affluent and/or urban households, suggesting that those from more advantaged social-economic backgrounds appear to have a higher elasticity of fertility in response to upward mobility. Our results imply that improving upward mobility and public services such as education, health care, and social security would be effective to boost fertility in China.

Education is widely considered as the most important path to social mobility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), yet there are very few studies of the extent to which it fulfills this promise. In this paper we use survey data from eight MENA countries to understand the relationship between schooling attainment of youth and the circumstances into which they are born, namely gender, parental education, parental household’s position in the per capita expenditure distribution and urban/rural location. We consider various attainment levels from the chance of entering any kind of schooling to attending upper secondary schooling and address the fact that many children are still in school by using a censored ordered probit model. We find high degrees of inequality of opportunity in school attainment, especially with respect to attending secondary school. The most opportunity unequal countries in this respect are Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia are the least opportunity unequal in this respect. This paper builds on a previous study of inequality of opportunity in educational achievement, which showed that in most MENA countries, learning opportunities are not equal. In this study, we find that - even in attending and staying in school- the playing field is not level.

Against the background of an emerging rental affordability crisis, we examine how the standard rule that households should not spend more than 30% of their income on housing expenditures leads to inefficiencies in the context of federal low-income housing policy. We quantify how the current practice of locally indexing individual rent subsidies in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program regardless of quality-of-life conditions implicitly incentivizes recipients to live in high-amenity areas. We also assess a novel scenario for housing policy reform that adjusts subsidies by the amenity expenditures of low-income households, permitting national HCV program coverage to increase. © 2018 The Authors. Journal of Regional Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1School of Public & International Affairs, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 2Department of Economics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 3Global Forum on Urban & Regional Resilience, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 4School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 5National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Correspondence David S. Bieri, School of Public & International Affairs, Virginia Tech, 140 Otey St., Blacksburg, VA 24601-0113. Email: bieri@vt.edu We are grateful to the editor, Ed Coulson, and two anonymous referees for detailed guidance and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Several colleagues have provided helpful input on this research, including, without implicating, Lan Deng, Jonathan Levine, Kirk McClure, and participants at seminar and conference presentations at the Annual Meetings of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the Regional Science Association International, the Urban Affairs Associations, and the Urban Economics Association. We thank Natalia Kolesnikova for providing us with MSA-level return to education estimates. An earlier version of this paper circulated under the title “Housing Affordability with Local Wage and Price Variation.” Bieri also acknowledges financial support from the University of Michigan'sGra-ham Institute on Environmental Sustainability. The usual disclaimers apply.

The paper estimates the degree of intergenerational earnings persistence in South Africa. It explores the link between this measure of social mobility and an index of inequality of opportunity. Using microdata from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the paper finds that intergenerational earnings mobility in South Africa is low. In addition, a limited set of inherited circumstances explains a significant fraction of earnings inequality among male adults. Adding South Africa to the existing international literature supports the hypothesis that low levels of intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity are emblematic of high-inequality emerging economies.

Increases in U.S. income inequality are driven primarily by rapidly rising incomes of the top 1%. At the national scale, rising inequality is associated with negative consequences for economic growth and stability, a range of social problems and declining social mobility. To date, there is no or little work on the geography of the top 1% and their impact on the cities they inhabit. Using individual income data from the U.S. Census, the paper offers the first detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of the top 1% in the United States. The paper makes use of the range of socio-demographic variables attached to individual records to illustrate that the large majority of the top 1% lives in large cities and that women and ethnic minorities are largely excluded from membership in the top 1%. The widening gap between incomes at the top and bottom will thus lead to increasing gender and ethnic income inequalities. Exploratory analysis of the impact of the top 1% on the bottom 99% suggests that cities with large shares of the top 1% are characterized by higher levels of skill polarization, higher labour force participation rates and lower unemployment rates for those with little formal education and higher median incomes for the better educated. However, the paper shows that higher incomes are outstripped by higher housing costs indicating that any potential advantage trickling down from the top 1% to the bottom 99% is eroded by higher living costs. Preliminary analysis also suggests that cities with a higher share of the top 1% tend to be more segregated with potential implications for the supply, quality, access to and distribution of public local services.

This paper develops a theory of interpersonal status hierarchies that builds on and challenges traditional models of cumulative advantage. Cumulative advantage models predict stability in interpersonal status hierarchies, where status is defined by asymmetries in social relationships. According to strict cumulative advantage, initial status differences are exaggerated over time, making upward or downward mobility unlikely. We argue that interpersonal status hierarchies are instead quite fluid, with individuals regularly moving up or down the hierarchy. Individual status gains do not, however, disrupt the status order as the upwardly mobile are often pulled back to their original positions. This drag of the past generates the same long run status outcomes as cumulative advantage models, but through very different means: sustained upward mobility is rare because the upwardly mobile fail to maintain their status gains, and not because initial gains are impossible. More generally, the effect of the past limits sustained mobility in most, but not all, status hierarchies, and we expect sustained mobility where ties are stable and the expectations for reciprocity are low. We test our model using longitudinal data on adolescents, finding strong support for the theory. We end the paper with a reflexive discussion about measurement error, hypothesis testing, and “messy” longitudinal network data.

Macroeconomic analysis of inequality and intergenerational mobility typically abstracts from the role of endogenous childhood development. This paper shows that this omission is not innocuous. It extends the standard general-equilibrium heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model with earnings risk and credit constraints to incorporate endogenous early childhood investments (parental time and money), family transfers, and college education. Agents cannot invest in their own childhood development or pay their parents to do so, which can lead to inefficiently low levels of investments. Estimating the model to match key moments of the data (e.g., average childhood investments and returns to skills), we find that a government program that funds early childhood investments would reduce inequality by 20% and improve mobility by 60%, as well as yield a three times larger welfare increase than a government transfer that uses the equivalent revenue. Introducing these investments in the model as a short-run small-scale policy—as in an RCT—would underestimate the benefits by two-thirds. Long-run distribution changes are the main drivers of the differences in welfare and mobility outcomes, while general-equilibrium is important for the reduction of inequality. The paper also shows that by taking a temporary deficit to afford these investments in the transition, the government is able to increase the welfare of every new generation.

Education is one of the fundamental(s) of human rights. It is an important opportunity especially for growing children living in disadvantaged social conditions. Education is accepted as a means for social mobility that allows children a better life. However, the number of school dropouts named as “street working children” and “child workers” are increasing in the world. These children at the age of compulsory education are being forced to work instead of spending their times with constructive games and activities. Although some of them are attending school their working life is precluding their school life. Working out of school influences children's educational performance negatively. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between school attendance, learning, achievement, hard living and working conditions of children working on the streets. This research is a qualitative study and the description of the current situation is aimed. The population of the study is the children working in the streets of Istanbul. The sample includes 78 children. They are selected through convenience sampling method among the children who are working on the streets of Istanbul. In-depth interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview form. For the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics were calculated and content analysis was conducted for the open-ended questions. Most of the children working on the streets are at primary school age and are from the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey. Generally, they are the children of the uneducated and poor villagers who have been obliged to evacuate their villages because of the war. The children are working as bagel sellers, shoe shiners, tissue paper sellers, plaster sellers, water sellers and some of them were picking waste paper. School dropouts and absenteeism are a high rate and the success rate is quite low. Most of them don’t have enough motivation to continue with their education. Street-working children are in families that don’t have enough social, economic and cultural capital. So they cannot use the benefits of basic education right. The most important result of this study, learning and success are not only school-related process but is also a social process. Therefore, in order to use the right to education and the achievements, the children's families living conditions must be improved and children's security must be ensured.

According to Granovetter, weak ties link individuals to other social circles that place them in strategic positions to gain access to job information and opportunities otherwise not available in their innate networks. This paper affirms that weak ties, as a form of social capital, matter and that they assist in explaining variations in status attainment between ethnic groups in Singapore. I show that access to weak ties affects status attainment differently across ethnic groups and that the Malay’s weaker performance in the labour market is partly due to their lower access to weak ties. This paper would be of interest to scholars concerned with the intertwining of social stratification with social capital and ethnicity.

The article highlights how recent discussions on the need for a new measurement of well-being and social progress and therefore for an extension of national accounts with supplementary measures have placed the measurement of unaccounted economic activities of and within households and thus of social capital on the agenda. It is in this sense that social capital will be understood in this paper: as the human activities that take place outside of monetized markets, but within households or in interaction with individuals living in other households, and which may provide the basis for the formation of trust in society. This paper argues that time use surveys can provide relevant and currently missing data on social capital.

Examining the impact of the current global recession on social capital building amongst poor people in developing countries, his paper draws on the experiences of the Far East Economic Crisis in 1998 and argues that: (1) the poor depended heavily on bonding social capital during the Crisis, but the crunch-point beyond which they felt no longer able to rely on this is less certain; (2) bridging social capital could both be created and destroyed during the Crisis; (3) the impact of the Crisis affected men and women differently, but how different groups of men and women were affected by the Crisis is less clear; (4) NGOs could help build social capital with the poor, but their role could be restricted by financial difficulties. In light of the heterogeneous impact and complicated trade-offs between policies, this paper proposes five principles for policy interventions: (1) all social and economic programmes to deal with the current financial downturn should be ‘social capital- focused’; (2) local communities should have the power to decide what social capital programmes are implemented in their communities; (3) governments should make use of the food- and fuel-subsidy programmes to promote community participation; (4) targeting certain social groups to maximise the impact of social capital building is possible; (5) a better integration of quantitative and qualitative research is crucial to inform policy making.

This paper tracks the origins and inner changes of Barcelona's economic elite in the long term. The objective is to achieve a deeper understanding of the mechanism that families and individuals developed to gain access to the elites and retain their economic position. For doing so, the paper analyzes industrial and real estate tax payers in three moments (1853-1883-1919). Through this approach we can observe that in aggregate, elites (identified as the 5% of the higher taxpayers) move from a stationary state to a progressive increase of wealth concentration. For a deeper understanding of the mechanism and inner changes of this elite, we focus in 81 families and exhaustively we have tracked down their origin and evolution. The conclusion is that their initial wealth accumulation is linked with a few specific situations. Their economic promotion seems to be related to specific windows of opportunity that open at certain moments and/or places. Once these windows of opportunity close the elites seem to progressively lock on themselves. This tendency created social circles that favored endogamy.

Disproportionate levels of youth unemployment and economic marginalization in the Middle East have prompted many regional observers to conclude that socioeconomically disadvantaged Middle Eastern youth are more prone to radicalization and thereby constitute a threat to national and international security. The general consensus in these accounts is that low levels of occupational opportunities leave poor youth more disposed to frustration and fatalism, which in turn are strongly linked to radical politics. Alternatively, scholars in the language of rational choice argue that these young people engage in a deliberate calculation of means and ends in order to attain the power and wealth necessary for upward mobility. These scholars posit poor youth as rational, autonomous agents whose goals are defined by individual interests and preferences. However, these respective theories are unable to account for 1) the absence of political radicalism among poor youth in many countries of the Middle East, and 2) the presence of seemingly irrational acts among these youth that neither maximize self-interest, nor necessarily reflect individual preferences. Given the shortcomings of each of these prevailing theories, this paper, instead, synthesizes these two approaches and assesses the social conduct of poor youth in the Middle East from the perspective of aspirations-bounded rationality. From this vantage point, the behaviors of poor youth are not determined by individual economic interests or by pure emotion, but by aspirations. This paper proposes that these youth struggle and create strategies to improve their lives that are conditioned by experience and observation of those who inform their social worlds.

“Social enterprise” is an umbrella term that covers a broad range of organisations, which differ to a greater or lesser extent in their visibility, scope and dissemination, in the various countries, but which share the explicit pursuit of social objectives, in the world of business and in an on-going manner, by directly producing goods and services that benefit disadvantaged persons and the community at large.The aim of this paper is to investigate one of the first, if not the very first, social enterprise in Europe, the Italian social co-operative. It begins with a survey of the economic and social environment of the 1970s giving rise to this form of co-operative. The paper then outlines its original features and the legislation adopted to regulate it: social co-operatives, in fact, were not part of the tradition of the co-operative movement and, therefore, were not recognised by Italian law. This is followed by a statistical analysis, beginning with the first survey carried out to monitor this phenomenon and concluding with the more recent statistical data. Finally, an overview is provided of the social enterprises emerged in the major European countries and based on the Italian “prototype”.

The aim of this paper is to bridge the gaps in existing accounts of the evolution of intergenerational social mobility in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The study makes a potentially valuable contribution to the literature by extending the spectrum of institutional and historical contexts, in which (in)equality of opportunity has been considered so far, and a chance to re-examine existing evidence by using alternative datasets and a slightly different methodology. Following the conventions in the social mobility literature in this study I approach social destinations and social origins in terms of educational and occupational attainments of children and their parents respectively. For empirical part I utilize data from four representative cross-national surveys conducted in Russia in 1994, 2002, 2006 and 2013. To study historical change in the patterns of social mobility I identify four cohorts whose educational and occupational careers unfolded during four different historical periods (two for the Soviet and two for the post-Soviet period). Being informed by several earlier studies on post-socialist countries including earlier research on Russia, I anticipated (1) a trend towards lesser (rather than greater) openness in the late years of the Soviet era, (2) a temporary discontinuity of mobility patterns during the turbulent 1990s and (3) the ‘tightening up’ of social mobility regime in the more stable years of Russia’s post-Soviet history. If any such trend existed, my findings would rather suggest that it was directed towards decreasing intergenerational transmission of educational advantage in the post-Soviet era, rather than the other way around. Also, surprisingly and quite contrary to earlier findings and theoretical considerations, the changes in the pattern of occupational mobility remained surprisingly invariant to the changes in historical and institutional context. The paper concludes with highlighting some of the remaining puzzles and possible directions for future research.

Social capital is a person or group's sympathy or sense of obligation for another person or group. The objects of sympathetic feelings have social capital. Those holding sympathetic feelings for others provide social capital. Because social capital providers internalize the consequences of their choices on the objects of their social capital, they trade with each other on different terms and at different levels than would occur in arm's length transactions, all other things equal. Furthermore, changes in the distribution of social capital alter the terms and level of trade which in turn alter the distribution of income. This paper demonstrates mathematically the connection between changes in social capital and income distributions and then tests empirically the influence of social capital on household income distributions in the 50 U.S. states for the census years 1980, 1990, and 2000. The mathematical and empirical findings of this paper support the proposition that social capital measured by social capital indicator variables have important influences on the distribution of household incomes.

This paper demonstrates a working alternative to the accepted ethics of physician migration. A dominant cosmopolitan ethics encourages upward mobility of physicians in a globalized labour force, and this ultimately advances the position of individuals rather than improving public health-care service for vulnerable communities in the global South. Cuba's Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) challenges this trend as its institutional ethics furnishes graduates with appropriate skills, knowledge and service ethics to deliver quality care in marginalized areas. This paper provides an analysis of how ELAM trains physicians in community-oriented service for marginalized areas in the global South. The principle finding of this analysis is that ELAM exhibits a working alternative to the accepted ethics of physician migration, as it encourages graduates to practice in marginalized communities rather than feed the migration pipeline into the North. Arguably, ELAM serves as an important case study in how a medical school's ethics can work to bring graduates closer to the communities that are in desperate need of their skills and of their compassion.

This paper investigates student social capital in Norwegian secondary schools and its effects on student achievement. Using data from the national survey ‘Young in Norway 2002’, it explores the concept and measurement of social capital in the school context by applying factor analysis. The paper also tests an analytical model that links student home background, social capital at school and student academic achievement, using a structural modelling technique. Control variables in the analysis are student age, gender, school size and home community. Testing the analytical model with female and male student subgroup data takes gender perspectives into consideration. Finally, statistical results are presented and discussed, and implications for further research are provided. The study finds that student social capital, generated from student social relations with parents, teachers and peers, has a significant influence on student achievement.

This paper explores the role of social capital in mediating the effects of stressors on depression among a disadvantaged population. Utilizing a survey of 155 homeless people in a mid-sized southern U.S. city, the authors address the relevance of social capital for quality of life. The paper provides a critical test of whether social support and other forms of social capital matter when monetary and human capital is extremely limited. Under these resource-restricted circumstances does social capital add to our understanding of the distress process or does it merely restate the well established relationship between social support and quality of life outcomes? Various forms of social capital are measured: religious social capital, group participation, social trust, and bridging social capital along with a commonly used measure of social support -- perceived strong tie support. Findings suggest that social capital matters for even the most resource poor populations. In addition, social capital variables add significantly to the variance explained in depressive symptomatology over and above that traditionally explained by perceived social support.

This paper deals with social capital in a business network setting focusing on three aspects of social capital: social interaction, social bonds and trust. The paper argues that because of variations in underlying principles and inter-organizational business practices between different countries and culture, social capital processes will take different forms and place different levels of importance on relationships in different countries. The paper investigates how northern European managers perceive social interaction, social bonds and trust in conducting business with ethnic Chinese business partners. The explorative study builds on interviews with 28 Finnish and Swedish managers in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. The findings of the study indicate that when northern European and ethnic Chinese firms develop trading relationships, the resulting relationship is neither Nordic nor Chinese. Both parties deviate from their native behaviour and a new type of relationship evolves as the exchange partners interact.

Women's acquisition of entrepreneurial capital may be restricted by demand side identity constraints as women who pursue non-traditional entrepreneurial livelihoods may stand at odds with activity-regulating social norms. By explicitly incorporating social norms into a model of women's decision-making, this paper provides an analytical framework that helps understand the social factors that limit women's demand for capital. The model shows that because of these social effects, a credit program that relaxes supply constraints may reconstruct gender norms and have a social multiplier effect, shifting an entire group or community to a higher-income equilibrium. Using a social effects econometric framework, the paper then confirms the existence of reference group effects on women's demand for entrepreneurial capital in rural Paraguay. Identification of these as endogenous social effects relies on the separate measurement of each woman's social reference group, allowing the use of village-level fixed effects to sweep away confounding contextual influences. Results are robust to the use of a restricted reference group comprised solely of ‘inherited’ family members, and analysis of demand by male partners reveals that the social effect is gendered and hence likely to reflect social norm effects rather than endogenous social learning or exogenous social effects.

This paper surveys a recent body of research by Carneiro, Hansen, and Heckman [Carneiro, P., K. Hansen, and J.J. Heckman, 2001, Fall. Removing the veil of ignorance in assessing the distributional impacts of social policies. Swedish Economic Policy Review 8 (2), 273–301., Carneiro, P., K. Hansen, and J.J. Heckman, 2003, May. Estimating distributions of treatment effects with an application to the returns to schooling and measurement of the effects of uncertainty on college choice. International Economic Review 44 (2), 361–422. 2001 Lawrence R. Klein Lecture], Cunha and Heckman [Cunha, F. and J.J. Heckman, 2006. The evolution of earnings risk in the US economy. Presented at the 9th World Congress of the Econometric Society, London], Cunha, Heckman, and Navarro [Cunha, F., J.J. Heckman, and S. Navarro, 2004, March. Separating heterogeneity from uncertainty in an aiyagari–laitner economy. Presented at the Goldwater Conference on Labor Markets, Arizona., Cunha, F., J.J. Heckman, and S. Navarro, 2005, April. Separating uncertainty from heterogeneity in life cycle earnings, The 2004 Hicks Lecture. Oxford Economic Papers 57 (2), 191–261., Cunha, F., J.J. Heckman, and S. Navarro, 2006. Counterfactual analysis of inequality and social mobility. In S.L. Morgan, D.B. Grusky, and G.S. Fields (Eds.), Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics, Chapter 4, pp. 290–348. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press], Heckman and Navarro [Heckman, J.J. and S. Navarro, 2007, February. Dynamic discrete choice and dynamic treatment effects. Journal of Econometrics 136 (2), 341–396] and Navarro [Navarro, S., 2005. Understanding Schooling: Using Observed Choices to Infer Agent's Information in a Dynamic Model of Schooling Choice When Consumption Allocation is Subject to Borrowing Constraints. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL] that identifies and estimates the ex post distribution of returns to schooling and determines ex ante distributions of returns on which agents base their schooling choices. We discuss methods and evidence, and state a fundamental identification problem concerning the separation of preferences, market structures and agent information sets. For a variety of market structures and preference specifications, we estimate that over 50% of the ex post variance in returns to college are forecastable at the time agents make their schooling choices.

Drawing from mixed-methods research into the Herper community (Maddox, 2015), this paper explores experiences and moments of serendipity to illustrate how the imbrication of networked digital technologies and social networks reconfigure avenues for social mobility. In 1973 Mark Granovetter proposed the timeless hypothesis that forms of social mobility, such as getting a job, were facilitated through ‘the strength of weak ties’. This lateral social process, revealed through a relational understanding of social networks, brought into focus how relationships may lever opportunities across trenchant forms of social stratification such as class relations. Networked digital technologies have transformed how weak-tie acquaintances are formed and maintained and reconfigured notions of social order to resemble ‘small worlds’ rather than the hierarchical organisation of the nation-state. This paper provides examples from the case study community to explore experiences of serendipity as a way to understand how such instances of luck, chance and opportunity are hard-wired into the open social structures of digital community.

This paper deals with the principle of relative risk aversion (RRA), which has been put forward by Breen and Goldthorpe (1997) as an explanation of inequality in educational attainment. While the original idea of the concept is to account for the basic mechanisms that produce educational inequality, this paper argues that RRA can also provide an explanation of dynamic processes related to changes in educational attainment over successive birth cohorts. RRA provides a rationale for educational upward mobility vis-a-vis the parents’ generation whenever educational requirements attached to occupations change. Relatedly, RRA can also account for changes in educational inequality if these processes vary with social origin. The paper elaborates on these implications theoretically and also suggests an empirical analytical framework for testing the explanatory contribution that the RRA principle can make to changes in educational mobility and inequality. The empirical analyses refer to Germany as a test case and utilize data from the German Microcensus and ALLBUS studies. The findings indicate that the RRA principle actually provides a partial explanation of educational upward mobility and also accounts for substantial parts of the changes in inequality in educational attainment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causes of depression in Esther Greenwood in the novel the Bell Jar written by Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar is considered a sort of semi autobiography of Plath's life. In the novel, Plath depicts the American society during the 1950's, conveying how difficult upward mobility was for women during this period, even when these women had degrees from different American Universities. The paper also argues the different causes that triggers depression on Esther Greenwood, and how she copes with depression. In addition, the paper explains how the dominated-male society during this period, affected the integration of intellectual women in the American society.

The article examines the concept of social capital as it applies to Indonesia at the meso level aggregation, some of its manifestations and impact on socioeconomic wellbeing. The paper is based on data drawn from socioeconomic indicators published in Statitik Potensi Desa, Indonesia, 2008. Study findings confirm previous empirical studies on the subject (Miguel et al 2002 being the paper that inspired this article, being one of them) to the effect that social capital is an important people-centered resource, and takes various manifestations. Even more important, social capital, based on findings in this paper, can be nurtured or induced through actions of state and non-state actors alike. This makes social capital a highly potential community and country resource that awaits reawakening where it has been ignored, but also promoted, in social contexts, where it is innately nonexistent. Creating conditions that favor the evolution and sustainability of savings and credit unions, non-governmental organizations, and other self-help social organizations that help in voluntary resource mobilization, exchange and utilization associations enhances the ‘tangible’ benefits which members of social organizations see, obtain and derive from working and collaborating with other members in their vicinity as well as those not very near but with whom they share interests, problems, hence the natural affinity to ‘band’ together. Moreover, though not significant, study findings point to the fact that conditions are characterized by rampant violence in society are inimical to social capital. To that end, encouraging and fostering social capital is imperative to avert violence plagued conditions, which by extension shields society from associated dangers. It is also important to note that the creation and sharing of benefits of social capital, which is possible under conditions of easy transportation and communications, harmonious social relations and social stability, are very vital for nurturing and development of social capital. To that end, the West-East divide that is not only palpable but also very real in Indonesia which is manifested in the relative paucity of voluntary associations in the East compared to the level in Western Indonesia, is in part responsible for the stark disparity in development between the two regions. Marked difference in level of social capital intensity between the two regions of Indonesia, all factors remaining the same, has affected the disparity in the capacity in the two regions to take advantage of the fruits of a democratized Indonesia (with attendant observance of freedom of expression and association, including the right to demand state respect for the right to economic rights and security of property. This explains why institutions which enhance the ability and capacity of members of community to access economic resources (savings and credit cooperatives, NGOs, and Non KUD cooperatives are key factors that influence and are influenced by social capital level. To that end, social capital, by serving as an ‘enabler’ of the community to mobilize, exchange financial resources available within the community and beyond, is vital for reducing obstacles of financing, which community members either in individual and collective capacity, face in carrying out their economic activities.

This paper draws a picture of how social origin and social capital play decisive roles in the selection of higher educational programmes among backward class students of India. The two dimensions of social capital namely family social capital and social networks are considered as social capital in this study. Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) are the three social groups dealt as backward classes. This paper investigates if there is any difference in the social capital of the students who accessed prestigious professional programmes such as Medical, Engineering and Paramedical courses and the students who accessed less prestigious programmes such as Arts and Science courses. This paper also investigates if there is any association between social origin and choice of different higher educational programmes by backward class students. Data were collected from 523 backward class students pursuing higher educational programmes in government, aided and private institutions of Kerala state of India. The result shows that social background of the backward class Students has significant role in getting admission to higher educational courses they have accessed. The study also reveals that social capital also plays significant role in certain situations, to get access to higher education.

This paper empirically examines intergenerational economic mobility in Vietnam. The two-sample two-stage least squares estimation is employed to achieve the research objective using two primary samples of father-son pairs and father-daughter pairs from Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey of 2012, and one secondary sample from Vietnam Living Standards Survey of 1997-1998. The baseline intergenerational elasticity estimates show that Vietnam occupies the intermediate degrees of intergenerational mobility of earnings and income for both sons and daughters. In particular, a rise of 10% in fathers’ individual earnings is on average associated with an increase of 3.61% and 3.94% for sons’ individual earnings and individual income, respectively. The corresponding figures for daughters’ individual earnings and individual income are 2.84% and 3.33%, respectively. This paper also provides evidence on the average degree of inequality of opportunity in Vietnam during its transition from a central planning economy to a market-oriented system.

A long and extensive line of welfare state research reveals that the state is both a cause and consequence of social stratification. However, the findings of this research have largely been ignored in the literature on social stratification and mobility. Similarly, welfare state scholars largely work without reference to the research on social stratification and mobility. The papers presented in the volume are an important first step towards integrating the literatures these complementary literatures. In this commentary, I push these articles further by revealing linkages between the papers that are not fully developed in papers themselves. In particular, I highlight two ways in which the papers in this issue can be productively linked to raise new questions or provide new insight into old problems. I then discuss the reasons why and productive ways in which these two large and stand-alone literatures can be integrated. I end the commentary with a section describing productive avenues for future research that integrates both literatures.

Sport is often regarded as an important part of life in rural Australia, contributing to community identity, sense of place, social interaction and good health. The involvement of rural citizens in sport also has the potential to contribute to social capital. Understood in simple terms as norms of reciprocity and associational life, social capital is often regarded as a positive resource in rural areas. Drawing on a case study of the Northern Wheatbelt of Western Australia, this paper examines the links between sport and social capital in a rural region. In particular, it considers the ways in which sport acts as a vehicle for the creation and expression of social capital. The paper also considers the so-called darker side to social capital, and the extent to which this is evident in the Northern Wheatbelt. The paper shows that sport is an important arena for the creation and maintenance of social capital. However, it is also clear that this is being eroded as a result of wider processes of economic and social restructuring in rural Australia. The paper also points out that the social capital generated by sport is often fragile, and can lead to social exclusion and marginality for some residents. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper analyzes US geographic differences over nine regions in patterns of occupational mobility between 1880 and 1900 among the National Panel Study (NPS) of white men in the age cohorts 5–14 and 25–34. Comparisons focus on father-to-son mobility for the younger age cohort as it reached adulthood, and on intra-generational movement in midlife for the older cohort. Levels of upward mobility vary positively in both cohorts with levels of regional urbanization, while, contrary to the “frontier thesis” of American historians, location in the most recently settled parts of the United States has little relationship to occupational mobility. Using log linear models, the paper analyzes the higher mobility of the urban regions. Inheritance of occupation across and within generations is relatively constant across urban regions. Most of the geographic variation is explained by differential occupational structure, especially the growth of a clerical/sales workforce in the urban regions.