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Can 'good' social mobility news be 'bad' and vice versa?: Measurement (and downward mobility) pitfalls

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  • Vegard Iversen

Abstract

Limited attention has been paid to how well social mobility measures debated and used to study industrial countries perform in analysis of low-income settings. Following brief, selective reviews of the axiomatic and econometric literatures, three mobility concepts illustrate how properties that appear innocuous in industrial country analysis become problematic when downward mobility includes descents into destitution.

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  • Vegard Iversen, 2020. "Can 'good' social mobility news be 'bad' and vice versa?: Measurement (and downward mobility) pitfalls," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-13, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2020-13
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