Page 70 - The Importance of Common Metrics for Advacing Social Science Theory and Research

The Importance of Common Metrics for Advancing Social Science Theory and Research: A Workshop Summary
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58 THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMON METRICS

A NATIONAL PROTOCOL FOR MEASURING
INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY?

David Grusky began his presentation by observing that there is no
standardized measure for intergenerational mobility largely because of the
paucity of scholarly interest in standardization, the balkanization of fields,
and sparse data. Much academic research on intergenerational mobility is
conducted in economics and sociology, quite independently and separately
from one another. Economists are focused on economic standing and eco-
nomic mobility; sociologists are focused on occupations and social mobility.
This balkanization of fields may be precluding the rise of a standardized
measure for intergenerational mobility. Researchers have to date been more
focused on the science itself and moving the academic debate within their
own disciplines. In addition, he argued, the data are not available to carry
out the study of mobility in any compelling way. The paucity of data has
led to a “cacophony of very clever models,” a situation that does not lend
itself to the rise of a single standardized approach.
In each of the two disciplines, there is some amount of infighting,
Grusky observed. In economics, the concept of economic standing is seen
as important, but there is debate about how to operationalize it. In sociol-
ogy, there is consensus on how to measure occupation, but there is debate
about how best to understand occupational mobility and what it means
about the social world.
In economics, the preferred method is calculating the intergenerational
elasticity of income, but its calculation has been hampered by small sample
sizes and measurement error. The consensus view is that there is insuffi-
cient sample size in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National
Longitudinal Surveys to reliably glean trends, and there are not enough
repeated observations of income. These deficiencies have generated two
cottage industries to provide tabular analyses of income mobility (based on
quintiles) and wealth mobility.
In sociology, occupation is considered an omnibus extra-economic mea-
sure of social position, comparing, for example, the occupation of fathers
with that of sons or daughters. Perhaps the most compelling argument on
behalf of an occupational operationalization of mobility is that it embodies
information about where an individual stands in the social world. It signals
the skills and credentials (and hence life chances) of the individual, socio-
economic status and prestige, consumption practices and leisure activities,
and the social and cultural milieu in which he or she lives.
Grusky considered it a potentially useful division of labor for econom-
ics to focus on economic mobility and for sociology to focus on social mo-
bility. This permits examination of the extent to which the social worlds in
which people find themselves are the same as those in which their parents

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