This paper has two purposes. The first is to define clearly different social mobility concepts and components. The second is to embed these concepts and components into a larger context of social mobility research. The core of the paper develops six mobility concepts and their measures as well...

Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about...

This paper examines income mobility in developing countries. We start by synthesizing findings from the available evidence on relative mobility and poverty dynamics. We then describe evidence on economic mobility obtained via synthetic panels constructed from cross-section data. We echo earlier...

This paper discusses current methods for measuring and analysing occupational mobility, and the way in which methods designed for the analysis of developing countries may need to be modified when applied in other contexts. The paper discusses particular features of some developing societies,...

In the Global South economic mobility across generations or intergenerational economic mobility is in and of itself an important topic for research with consequences for policy. This 'Element' surveys the area, conceptually and empirically.