Is It True What They Say About Daddy?

Abstract

The traditional method for assesing generational mobility hass been exposed to remeasurement studies but not to the test of an alternative questioning strategy. This paper describes a design in which intergenerational mobility is studies from two perspectives. In the conventional approach sons report on their own statuses and give proxy reports for parental statuses. In our second perspective parents are questioned about themselves and give proxy information on their children. Estimates of a five-variable status-attainment model for eachperspective yield similar results, but some correlations and regressions differ significantly because nonrandom errors influence the reporting of socioeconomic data among adults. Our anomalous findings suggest that mobility researchers might consider employing both questioning strategies as a guide to potential biases until a definitive test shows that the caution prescribed in this paper is unwarranted. Consumers of mobility studies are entitled to reserve judgment on data that depend entirely on the traditional approach even though current research adheres to it almost without exception.