Understanding the Role of Schools, State Policies, and Economic Conditions in Explaining Recent Trends in Education Mobility

Rising levels of economic inequality over the past four decades raise many questions about the intergenerational transmission of advantage and the effects of rising inequality on social mobility. Scholars have analyzed IRS data on earnings correlations across generations and concluded that there has been little change in income mobility in the recent past, although they document substantial geographic variation in mobility. Most research on social mobility has focused on economic indicators and much remains to be resolved about the mechanisms that underlie the intergenerational transmission of advantage. Because increased education remains important as a perceived path to social and economic mobility, and because educational mobility seems relevant as a mechanism for understanding trends in economic mobility, an increased understanding of educational mobility is important. Given the relative lack of evidence about educational mobility, and the role of different and multiple factors in facilitating or impeding it, a comprehensive examination is much needed. Professor Jason Fletcher proposes to analyze three school-based longitudinal data sets from the past three decades to provide an assessment of educational mobility by focusing on three issues. First, he will estimate trends in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status in education across three decades at the national, state, and sub-state levels. Next, he will leverage the unique school-based sampling strategy of each data set to examine the impacts of shared school environments on intergenerational transmission and examine how these effects vary over time and across states. And finally, he will examine differences in the intergenerational transmission estimates based on state policy variation (e.g. graduation requirements, funding), school characteristics, and state economic conditions and policies (e.g. taxes, tax bases).