ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to ask whether conventional methods of monitoring mobility are adequate for the task. The gradational approach to studying mobility has inequality taking on a simple unidimensional form in which families are arrayed in terms of either income or occupational status. The social, cultural, and economic resources conveyed to children depend so fundamentally on the detailed occupations of their parents, one might expect such occupations to play a featured role in intergenerational reproduction, but in fact this role has gone largely unexplored in most mobility analyses. The children of carpenters, for example, may be especially likely to become carpenters because they are exposed to carpentry skills at home, socialized in ways that render them especially appreciative of carpentry as a vocation. Even in the absence of any intrinsic interest in occupational reproduction, children may still pursue it because it is the best route to big-class reproduction.
