The Causal Effect of Parent Occupation on Child Occupation
A Multivalued Treatment with Positivity Constraints
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2331209 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ian Lundberg (0000-0002-1909-2270, Department of Sociology, California Center for Population Research, UCLA Los Angeles, CA, USA, corresponding author), Daniel Molitor (0000-0001-9483-6121, Department of Information Science, Cornell University Ithaca, NY, USA), J E Brand (0000-0002-6568-498X, University of California, Los Angeles) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1435-1462 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociological Methods & Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-1241 • E-ISSN: 1552-8294 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00491241251338412 |
| PMID | 41769224 |
| OpenAlex | W4410942336 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 38 |
To what degree does parent occupation cause a child's occupational attainment? We articulate this causal question in the potential outcomes framework. Empirically, we show that adjustment for only two confounding variables substantially reduces the estimated association between parent and child occupation in a U.S. cohort. Methodologically, we highlight complications that arise when the treatment variable (parent occupation) can take many categorical values. A central methodological hurdle is positivity: some occupations (e.g., lawyer) are simply never held by some parents (e.g., those who did not complete college). We show how to overcome this hurdle by reporting summaries within subgroups that focus attention on the causal quantities that can be credibly estimated. Future research should build on the longstanding tradition of descriptive mobility research to answer causal questions
Developmental psychology · Econometrics · Statistics · Early Childhood Education and Development · Family Support in Illness · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology · Work-Family Balance Challenges
Generalized Additive Models
Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences
Mobility Tables
Causality
Americans’ occupational status reflects the status of both of their parents
Chapter 12 Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation
Long-term decline in intergenerational mobility in the United States since the 1850s
Social mobility and class structure in modern Britain
The constant flux
Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility
Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Great Britain and the United States Since 1850
Life-Cycle Variation in the Association between Current and Lifetime Earnings
Fortunate Sons
Socioeconomic Indexes for Occupations
A Multigenerational View of Inequality
Marginal Treatment Effects from a Propensity Score Perspective
Intergenerational Class Mobility in Three Western European Societies
Endogenous Selection Bias
Adding Covariates to Loglinear Models for the Study of Social Mobility
The American occupational structure
Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in the Presence of Self-Selection
The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market
A Summary of What We Know about Social Mobility
The Decomposition of Effects in Path Analysis
The Educational and Early Occupational Attainment Process
Bringing Intergenerational Social Mobility Research into the Twenty-first Century
Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective
Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation
Recent Developments in Causal Inference and Machine Learning
Market Transition, Industrialization, and Social Mobility Trends in Postrevolution China
Social Class and Income Inequality in the United States
The Case for a New Class Map
Occupational Prestige in the United States, 1925-63
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |