Stepping Stone versus Dead End Jobs: Occupational Pathways out of Working Poverty in the United States

• In Event: 528 - Regular Session. The Limits of Intergenerational Mobility and the Power of Social Reproduction

Abstract

In this paper we test for the existence of pathways of upward mobility for low wage workers by using the 1996-2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We argue that “stepping stone” links of mobility can be identified by whether the accumulation of occupational work experience increases the probability of upward movement between occupations with similar skill sets. In contrast, a “dead end” job is one which both pays low wages and where the accumulation of occupational experience does not increase the rate of upward mobility. In order to identify occupations with similar skill sets, we use data on occupational mobility from matched samples of the Current Population Survey (CPS) and data on skills from the O*NET. We test these “stepping stone” links using data on the mobility of low-wage workers from the SIPP. Overall, our analysis is able to identify specific areas of the occupational distribution that are permeable to upward mobility out of low wage jobs through experience based skill accumulation—which is consistent with a stepping stone model of wage mobility—and detect where specific groups of occupations fall on the dead end-stepping stone job dichotomy.

Authors

• Ted Mouw, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Arne L. Kalleberg, University of North Carolina