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Social Mobility Over Three Generations in Finland: A Critique

Chan, T.W.; Boliver, V.

Social Mobility Over Three Generations in Finland: A Critique Thumbnail


Authors

T.W. Chan



Abstract

Erola and Moisio (2007) argue that in Finland the class positions of grandparents and grandchildren are almost independent of each other, once parents’ social class has been taken into account. We show that this conclusion of ‘almost conditional independence’ is not supported by the results reported in their article. We further show that the strong evidence against conditional independence is not due to the large N of the Finnish mobility table alone, as the same critique applies to much smaller subsamples drawn randomly from the data. We then demonstrate with some illustrative outflow mobility rates that the grandparents effect in social mobility in Finland is not only statistically significant, but is also of substantive importance. Finally, we discuss the two ‘lagged’ effects reported in Erola and Moisio (2007), and show that they fail to capture much of the net GC association.

Citation

Chan, T., & Boliver, V. (2014). Social Mobility Over Three Generations in Finland: A Critique. European Sociological Review, 30(1), 13-17. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jct012

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Feb 1, 2014
Deposit Date Mar 18, 2013
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal European Sociological Review
Print ISSN 0266-7215
Electronic ISSN 1468-2672
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 30
Issue 1
Pages 13-17
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jct012

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Copyright Statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in European Sociological Review following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Chan, T. W. and Boliver, V. (2014) 'Social mobility over three generations in Finland : a critique.', European sociological review., 30 (1). pp. 13-17 is available online at: http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/13




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