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This paper examines the hypothesized inverse relationship between socioeconomic status and conservatism on a wide range of so-called social issues. This relationship is important in itself as well as in some theories that link political dealignment to features of postindustrial society. We examine this relationship by looking at the net effects of education, occupation, income, and class (owner, supervisor, or worker) on nine issues. Our results suggest that the hypothesized relationship is absent for most dimensions of socioeconomic status and most social issues. The most consistent exception to this is that liberalism on social issues tends to increase with education, but even here the relationship varies considerably from issue to issue. The lack of a consistent relationship reflects both the diversity of the social issues and the fuzziness of the social/economic distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the reply of authors to the comments by sociologist Novral D. Glenn. Glenn maintains that the approach which authors employ to detect mobility effects in the presence of main effects of origin and destination is flawed for several reasons. Authors concede at the outset that the approach is not the ideal way to study mobility. The ultimate solution must involve attempts to measure the concepts for which the mobility terms serve as proxies and their employment of these models is primarily heuristic. Glenn dismisses our identifying restrictions as either being trivial or arbitrary. The first restriction that mobility in the U.S. is characterized by small upward steps. Thus, those who are slightly upwardly mobile are likely to find themselves in unusual circumstances since many of similar origins will have moved with them. The second constraint is based on the linear dependence of mobility of origin and destination by incorporating the consideration that the effect of mobility is likely to increase ad mobility increases.

The article presents a reply to Walter R. Schumm and his colleagues, who have proposed an alternative means of dealing with situations involving an hypothesized effect of the difference between two variables. Their approach stresses the role of theory in specifying a priori an appropriate three-dimensional geometric model. They proposed that what they consider an alternative means of dealing with situations involving an hypothesized effect of the difference between two variables. Their approach stresses the role of theory in specifying a priori an appropriate three-dimensional geometric model and the testing of this model against alternative plausible models using regression. In the earlier article Charles J. Brody and James A. McRae made use of previous theory and research on the effects of social mobility to select an appropriate dependent variable for analysis, to propose two types of identifying restrictions leading to plausible three-dimensional models, and to rule out other identifying restrictions leading to less plausible models or unreasonable constraints on the mobility parameters.