The Inter-generational Transmission of Social Status

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course focuses on several enduring questions in sociology and economics: How strongly do children's social origins, characterized by race, ethnicity, gender, parents' social status, and neighborhood conditions, predict adult outcomes, including occupational status, earnings, and life expectancy? To what extent does the predictive power of social origins vary across societies and within societies over time? What explanations have social scientists offered to explain these predictions? What social policies have been most effective in reducing the predictive power of social origins? We'll critically examine the research literature and, as a case study, re-analyze national US survey data to ground our discussion.