Measuring Social Mobility
Abstract The paper considers the ranking of mobility matrices in a simple Markov model of social mobility. The approach is the dynamic counterpart ot the "static" inequality ranking of income distributions by the Lorenz curve. The derived partial ordering is motivated by welfare considerations, is shown to be equivalent to same intuitive mobility concepts, and is used to screen some immobility indices. The equivalence of the ranking with the "permanent income" Lorenz ordering gives support to the claim that this approach is the natural extension of Kolm′s [The optimal production of social justice, in "Public Economics (J. Margolis and H. Guitton, Eds.), MacMillan, London, 1969], Atkinson′s [On the measurement of inequality, J. Econ. Theory2 (1970), 244–263], and Dasgupta, Sen, and Starrett′s [Notes on the measurement of inequality, J. Econ. Theory6 (1973), 180–187] approaches. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D31, D63, J62.