Social Distance: A Network Approach

If occupation as structure is viewed as a network, a desirable statistical technique for the measurement of social distance is one which considers all possible paths through the network. Such a statistic is the mean first passage time, from the theory of stationary stochastic processes. Here the technique is applied to some classic social mobility data and to associational data. In the mobility data, distance from the top to the bottom of the occupational scale is greatest for the British data, and progressively less for the Danish, U.S. (1910), and U.S. (1940) data, in that order. The behavior of the distance to top professional and semiprofessional categories stands out, as does an overall hierarchical effect. In the analysis of the associational data, with a reinterpretation of the statistic, the technique was applied to data on the status of friends, neighbors, and father and father-in-law. A status bias in friendship choice was revealed, and a lesser bias for neighbor's status.