The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political & Social Science

Monitoring Social Mobility in the Twenty-First Century

The last major survey on U.S. social mobility was fielded in 1973.  Since then, the country’s capacity to monitor trends in mobility has languished, making it difficult to evaluate new concerns that mobility may be declining or to develop evidence-based policy on mobility and opportunity.  Once a leader in mobility research, the U.S. is now one of the few advanced industrial countries that lacks a high-quality infrastructure for monitoring trends in mobility, a surprising state of affairs for a country so committed to openness and equal opportunity.  The purpose of this volume, which brings together the country’s top scholars of mobility, is to examine how the U.S. can rectify this state of affairs and restore its capacity to monitor trends in mobility and to speak to the effects of social programs on opportunity.