ABSTRACT
Blau and Duncan have presented a path model of the occupational attainment process of American adult male population. This basic model begins with two variables describing the early stratification position of each person; these are his father's educational and occupational attainment statuses. One compelling feature of the model is that some of the inputs may be manipulated through experimental or other purposive interventions. This means that parts of it can be experimentally tested in future research and that practical policy agents can reasonably hope to use it in order to change educational and occupational attainments. The results seem to indicate, too, that aspirations are in fact performing mediational functions in transmitting anterior factors into behaviors. The research appears to have extended knowledge of causal mechanism influencing occupational attainment. Most of this was accomplished by providing a consistent social psychological model which adds to one's ability to explain what is surely one of its key proximal antecedents, educational attainment.
