The United States and Canada: Intergenerational social mobility among immigrants and their native-born children

Author(s):  
Arthur Sweetman ◽  
Khuong Truong
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Laurin ◽  
Holly R. Engstrom ◽  
Adam Alic

Social mobility is limited in most industrialized countries, and especially in the United States: Children born to relatively poor parents are less likely to prosper than other children. This observation has multiple explanations; in the current article, we focus on emerging motivational perspectives, synthesizing them into a novel integrative framework grounded in a classic theory of motivation: expectancy-value theory. Together, these findings indicate that individuals with lower socioeconomic status (SES) may be less motivated to achieve status relative to individuals with higher SES—not because of their own personal failings, but as a result of their material, social and cultural contexts. We then consider the significant theoretical advantages of this integrative framework, most notably that it enables us to consider how the disparate perspectives linking motivation to SES are linked and may at times compound or offset each other. In turn, this enables us to make sophisticated predictions concerning the conditions that will enable individuals with low SES to escape the vicious cycle of low motivation. Moreover, our account helps bridge the gap between explanations that locate the cause for low social mobility within individuals and those that locate it in the broader system. We end by addressing implications for the psychological understanding of low status and implications for social policy.


1997 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Aronowitz

In this article, Stanley Aronowitz argues that "American" ideology contains two elements. First, the United States is believed to confer equality of opportunity on each citizen. Second, unlike other advanced industrial nations, the United States is considered an "open society" that allows and promotes social mobility. In this paradigm, racial minorities and women have the same chances to escape the ranks of the working poor as White men. Aronowitz uses a class-based analysis nested within ethnicity to expose the fallacy of this ideology. Since higher education is most often pointed to as a source of social mobility, Aronowitz focuses his argument on the meritocratic norms that are replacing democratic norms within higher education, and on the devolution of educational opportunity for the poor, working class, and racial minorities.


2014 ◽  
Vol 657 (1) ◽  
pp. 208-246
Author(s):  
John Robert Warren

In this article I define the main criteria that ought to be considered in evaluating the costs and benefits of various data resources that might be used for a new study of social and economic mobility in the United States. These criteria include population definition and coverage, sample size, topical coverage, temporal issues, spatial issues, sustainability, financial expense, and privacy and data access. I use these criteria to evaluate the strengths and weakness of several possible data resources for a new study of mobility, including existing smaller-scale surveys, the Current Population Survey, the American Community Survey, linked administrative data, and a new stand-alone survey. No option is perfect, and all involve trade-offs. I conclude by recommending five possible designs that are particularly strong on the criteria listed above.


1975 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Dorris W. Goodrich ◽  
Mely Giok-lan Tan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paiheng Xu ◽  
Mark Dredze ◽  
David A Broniatowski

BACKGROUND Social distancing is an important component of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Minimizing social interactions and travel reduces the rate at which the infection spreads and “flattens the curve” so that the medical system is better equipped to treat infected individuals. However, it remains unclear how the public will respond to these policies as the pandemic continues. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to present the Twitter Social Mobility Index, a measure of social distancing and travel derived from Twitter data. We used public geolocated Twitter data to measure how much users travel in a given week. METHODS We collected 469,669,925 tweets geotagged in the United States from January 1, 2019, to April 27, 2020. We analyzed the aggregated mobility variance of a total of 3,768,959 Twitter users at the city and state level from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS We found a large reduction (61.83%) in travel in the United States after the implementation of social distancing policies. However, the variance by state was high, ranging from 38.54% to 76.80%. The eight states that had not issued statewide social distancing orders as of the start of April ranked poorly in terms of travel reduction: Arkansas (45), Iowa (37), Nebraska (35), North Dakota (22), South Carolina (38), South Dakota (46), Oklahoma (50), Utah (14), and Wyoming (53). We are presenting our findings on the internet and will continue to update our analysis during the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS We observed larger travel reductions in states that were early adopters of social distancing policies and smaller changes in states without such policies. The results were also consistent with those based on other mobility data to a certain extent. Therefore, geolocated tweets are an effective way to track social distancing practices using a public resource, and this tracking may be useful as part of ongoing pandemic response planning.


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