The American creed stresses political equality and political involvement, but substantial political inequality still persists from one generation to the next. Despite the importance of political inequality, not enough is known about the mechanisms that reproduce it. Political socialization research has focused on the transmission of political attitudes and culture across generations, but it has…
This article reviews recent developments in measuring education and skill that need to be taken into account in any new initiative to monitor social mobility. Over the past half-century, patterns of educational participation and attainment have become more heterogeneous, a trend that has been accompanied by increases in assessment and testing practices, and the availability of electronic data s…
Over the last several decades, two of the most significant developments in the U.S. labor market have been (1) rising inequality and (2) growth in both the size and the diversity of immigration flows. Because a large share of new immigrants arrive with very low levels of schooling, English proficiency, and other skills that have become increasingly important determinants of success in the U.S. …
Studies of social mobility typically focus on the associations between the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and families in one generation and those same characteristics for the next generation. Yet the life chances of individuals may be affected by a wider network of kin than just the nuclear family, including grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, and even more remote kin. In p…
Families play a central role in the study of social mobility—they are units of analysis for measuring social class as well as settings that shape the intergenerational transmission of resources. The American family has undergone important changes since the mid-twentieth century. Divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and cohabitation increased dramatically. The rise in divorce and cohabitation made …
The country’s capacity to monitor trends in social mobility has languished since the last major survey on U.S. social mobility was fielded in 1973. It is accordingly difficult to evaluate recent concerns that social mobility may be declining or to develop mobility policy that is adequately informed by evidence. This article presents a new initiative, dubbed the American Opportunity Study (AOS),…
This article reviews the sociological and economic literature on intergenerational mobility. Findings on social class, occupational status, earnings, and income mobility are discussed and discrepancies among them are evaluated. The review also examines nonlinearities in the intergenerational association, variation in mobility across advanced industrial countries, and recent mobility trends in t…
We need more—and better—data on social mobility in the United States. Normative questions must be answered first. We have to know why we care about a particular pattern of mobility to know how to set about measuring it. The distinction between relative and absolute mobility is a case in point. Do we care most about whether people are better off than their parents, or about how much movement the…
Academic research on social mobility from the 1960s until now has made several facts clear. First, and most important, it is better to ask how the conditions and circumstances of early life constrain adult success than to ask who is moving up and who is not. The focus on origins keeps the substantive issues of opportunity and fairness in focus, while the mobility question leads to confusing sid…
Multi-sector collaborations are challenging to establish and difficult to sustain; they require considerable commitment of time and resources from participants and supporting organizations that must work together across diverse perspectives and agendas and perceive their efforts as worthwhile. Methods of network analysis have been identified as offering potentially useful tools to assist those …
There is a flurry of research activity surrounding the Transition Movement, yet no previous inquiry has examined the movement's political economy. This investigation fills this gap in scholarship by analysing the movement's localization agenda and gives particular emphasis to the implications for political relations between community members and with local governments. Through direct participat…
Community interventions are critical components of strategies to improve global health. However, the proliferation of forms of community intervention and their subsequent misclassification has led to the comparison and equation of dissimilar forms and thus confusion about which forms are most effective, which should be adopted and how to implement them in practice. This article presents a frame…
Providing development inputs like electrical energy is a formidable task in many parts of the developing world. The generally rural nature of developing countries makes it necessary to devise innovative ways of getting electricity to the non-urban majority. It is also imperative that adequate and productive electrical power is made available, for sustainable development to be achieved by rural …
Restorative justice processes are increasingly advocated as methods that can be implemented to improve community development. Considering this expansion it is remarkable that little research has been undertaken on how professionals who work in community settings experience using restorative approaches. This article aims to describe the experiences of community workers, police officers, children…
This article examines the function of community-based organizations in engaging citizens in planning healthy built environments in urban neighbourhoods. Research on the 3-year Green, Active, Healthy Neighbourhoods (GAHN) initiative, spearheaded by a city-wide umbrella group and local organizations in four boroughs of Montreal found that in activating citizen participation, the role of organizat…
Health impact assessment (HIA) is a tool by which prospective policies and plans are evaluated for their potential impact on human health outcomes. This interdisciplinary practice uses community-based approaches to examine social determinants of health. This paper critically examines the prevailing belief that HIA practice in the US context increases community democracy, equity, and social just…
This article explores the use of photovoice in understanding the roles and experiences of community development workers in Uganda and how such methodology can foster dialogue. Community development workers, attached to a local development organisation, took photographs and engaged in discussions about their roles and experiences. The rich and generative photovoice exercise revealed four major t…
This article is based on a qualitative project that focused on women with disabilities in Binga in Zimbabwe and their participation in government and non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) initiatives, as well as their access to formal support for self-initiated projects. To achieve this aim, a story-telling approach was used, complemented with semi-structured interviews and focus group discuss…
Urban space has the potential to shape people's experience and understanding of the city and of the culture of a place. In some respects, murals and allied forms of wall art occupy the intersection of street art and public art; engaging, and sometimes, transforming the urban space in which they exist and those who use it. While murals are often conceived as a more ‘permanent’ form of painted ar…
Social marketing is the application of marketing theory to social issues. A significant drawback, though, is that practitioners are encouraged to assume high levels of agency among their target audiences, often while developing programmes aimed at very disadvantaged groups. However, some social marketers work openly and collaboratively at neighbourhood level to co-create change with the people …