Discrete Graphical Models in Social Mobility Research - A Comparative Analysis of American, Czechoslovakian and Hungarian Mobility before the Collapse of State Socialism

Variants of path models have been widely used for the analysis of the social status attainment process. The methods presented here differ from earlier approaches in several ways. Social status is considered a categorical variable and path models are developed starting from graphical models, using the marginal log-linear approach. Overall model fit may be tested by standard techniques. Under these models, the status attainment process is completely characterized by a set of parameters that measure the strengths of the relevant effects. This is in sharp contrast with estimating and interpreting ad hoc parameters, without paying attention to overall model fit and to other effects influencing the process. The method is applied to the social status attainment process in the USA, Hungary and Czechoslovakia at the end of the last century, and shows that policies in the latter socialist countries to prevent status inheritance had little success.