ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a selection of technical and methodological issues raised in the literature on intergenerational occupational mobility. It considers the issue of how occupational mobility may be related to changes in occupational structure. The juxtaposition of themes—social mobility and economic development—in the title of the conference may invite acceptance of an unwarranted assumption. In point of fact there is and can be no fixed and determinate general relationship between measures of economic growth and indexes of social mobility, either over time in one country or between countries at a point in time. Interspatial comparisons of factors determining occupational mobility will be facilitated by the adoption of comparable methodology for the measurement of occupational status. Because interspatial comparisons almost always concern situations with different "structures", differences in mobility patterns are to be expected. The transition matrix will reflect such differences in patterns when analyzed in several alternative ways.
