Some Preliminary Findings on Social Stratification in the United States

This is a preliminary report from a study of occupational mobility in the United States. The objectives of the study are to describe the patterns of social mobility in some detail, to estimate the influence of various factors on occupational life chances, and to ascertain a few consequences of socio-economic status and mobility, such as their implications for fertility. The present paper reports selected findings pertaining to factors affecting occupational achievement and the chances to move away from one’s social origins. In particular, we shall examine the significance for occupational attainment of education, ethnic background, community size, migration, and parental family. In addition to presenting preliminary substantive findings from our research, this paper also provides an opportunity for illustrating the analytical procedures we have used. The analysis relies to a large extent on the regression approach. Two major advantages of this approach which prompted our decision to adopt it are that it is a very efficient method of large-scale data reduction and that it permits, consequently, the simultaneous examination of the interrelations of fairly large numbers of variables, especially if computers are used. Contingency tables containing half a dozen or more variables and many hundreds of cells are too complex to be analyzed by inspection, whereas the regression method permits the analysis of these interrelations. To be sure, a limitation of regression analysis is that it makes restrictive assumptions about linearity and the absence of interaction effects, but the assumptions can be taken into account and hence removed in more complex analytical models. Simpler methods we use, such as comparisons of mean scores of occupational status, are complemented by regression analysis to determine not only the gross effects of various factors on socio-economic status but also the net effects with other variables held constant.