The Status Attainment Process: Socialization or Allocation?

A review is presented of the research which has led to the construction of elaborated models of status attainment, noting that the major theoretical thrust in this work has followed a socialization perspective. It is suggested that there are both theoretical and empirical grounds for including in such investigation indices of the effects of allocation as well as socialization. This can be done by incorporating in the models measures of those characteristics used in making allocation decisions as well as through more refined use of contextual analysis. The greatest challenge in such further investigations is to explicate the association between educational attainment and occupational attainment. Within the last decade there has been an almost overwhelming flood of research and writing about the process of status attainment in the United States. Beginning with the Coleman-Campbell analysis of Equality of Educational Opportunity and Blau and Duncan's catalytic reconceptualization of the investigation of social mobility, we have seen not only a large number of studies, but also a rapidly increasing complexity and sophistication in the analyses conducted. The purpose of this work has been twofold. First, it has attempted to develop as powerful a prediction model as possible with which to explain the variation in status attainment. Second, it has been concerned with the problem of estimating and then explaining the degree of intergenerational continuity of social position. By far the most influential recent work in this problem area has followed the so-called "Wisconsin model" (Sewell and Hauser, a; Sewell et al., a, b). Beginning with a basic demographic model of intergenerational mobility taken from the Blau and Duncan volume and from Duncan's further work (a), social-psychological variables are introduced to explicate the associations found. The basic Duncan model uses SES of origin and ability to explain educational attainment, and then all three of those variables are used to explain occupational attainment. The most fundamental finding from that analysis is that occupational attainment is most fully influenced by, educational attainment, and the great preponderance of the effects of SES and ability on occupational attainment are mediated through educational attainment. In effect, the Wisconsin model is an attempt to give further theoretical meaning to these basic findings. Work on the model began with the problem of explaining the associations between SES of origin and ability on the one hand and educational attainment on the other. The theoretical stance taken is that of the social interactionist, with the link between origin and attainment being sought in the