ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the problems of measuring intergenerational mobility, and deals with several other questions: How is social mobility related to chronological age? What life experiences have been associated with mobility or with stability? What is the relative frequency of various routes or pathways of mobility? The large majority of "urban" parents lived in small communities, Kansas, and Iowa. In general, Kansas City upper status levels include many who have been upwardly mobile, while the lower status levels are primarily composed of people who have been more or less stable. The upper-class group in Kansas City seems to have been a difficult class to move into—perhaps because its members exercised greater selectivity in "admission policy" through their clubs and their informal patterns of social acceptance and ostracism. With the exception of the upper class, the mobility patterns consistently point in the same direction.
