Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods, and Determinants

Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility, especially in the developing world. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge from different disciplines.