Social mobility in developing countries — concepts, methods, and determinants

The project meeting on Social Mobility in Developing Countries gathers together an interdisciplinary group of international scholars to discuss joint work on the study of social mobility in developing countries. They will be joined by interested stakeholders in the policy and research community on 5-6 September in Helsinki.

Social mobility, defined as the ability to move from a lower to a higher level of education, occupational status, or socioeconomic class or income group, is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There is broad agreement that in a just society, all people should have a roughly equal chance of success regardless of the families into which they were born.

Yet, the tools needed to study social mobility in developing countries and monitor progress on this global goal have not been fully developed or deployed by the economics profession or the development community. To fill this void, UNU-WIDER has begun a project to publish a foundational text on the study of social mobility in the developing world.

Drawing together, for the first time, big names from a diverse set of academic professions— including sociology, history, and ethnography — with development economists, policymakers, and statisticians to formulate an interdisciplinary set of core principles, methods, and data collection needs, this project meeting will share draft chapters of the forthcoming book from UNU-WIDER and Oxford University Press with high-level discussants from the global research and policy communities.

The program’s speakers will share their work over two days and receive critical and constructive feedback from expert discussants throughout the sessions.

The project meeting is a component of UNU-WIDER’s work programme on Social mobility in the global south — concepts, measures, and determinants which combines expertise from multiple fields of development and academic practice to develop methods and concepts for measuring and analysing the evolution of social mobility in developing countries.