What Are Mobility Effects? A Response to Song & Zhou

• In Event: Methodology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

In my 2022 American Sociological Research article, titled “Heterogeneous Effects of Intergenerational Social Mobility: An Improved Method and New Evidence”, I proposed a model, called the Mobility Contrast Model (MCM), for estimating the effects of intergenerational social mobility on an outcome of interest. In a 2025 article that appeared in Sociological Methodology & Research, Song and Zhou (S&Z hereafter) contends that the MCM is flawed because (1) the estimates change with coding schemes and (2) the model lacks causal interpretation. In this paper, I first provide responses to each of their critiques and then discuss a useful estimand in mobility research and demonstrates the conditions under which it corresponds to the MCM. My goal is to offer further clarifications about the sociological concept of intergenerational mobility and the MCM method that may benefit research on social stratification, mobility, and inequality.

Author

• Liying Luo, Pennsylvania State University