Estimating Selection Effects in Occupational Mobility in a 19th-Century City

This study examines the relationship between the processes of occupational mobility and persistence. Using manuscript census data from Indianapolis, 1850-1860, I assess the importance of selection effects on the likelihood of upward or downward mobility and on the socioeconomic status achieved by 1860, relative to 1850 origin status. Alternative speculations have argued that out-migrants either constituted a sort of permanent floating proletariat (and therefore were distinctly unsuccessful in terms of occupational advancement), or were particularly aggressive entrepreneurs (and therefore likely to be among the most successful). As an indirect test of these hypotheses, mobility and persistence were modeled as joint outcomes influenced by a common set of unobserved variables. The analysis of Indianapolis data shows that the sorting processes of occupational mobility and nonpersistence were affected by a similar set of observed characteristics, but that unmeasured variables exerted no net effects.