Aims and objectives
The project aims to create representative longitudinal panels of census data in a comparable manner in three countries, and contribute to a long-standing debate on social structure and opportunity in Britain and North America. Given the recent availability of large-scale census databases the challenge now in constructing panel data from censuses is not finding sufficient cases, but ensuring that the panels are representative and unbiased. False links lead to artifactual social mobility, so it is important to ensure high levels of accuracy. We aim to do this in a similar way across Canada, Great Britain, and the United States taking account of differences in census enumeration methods and questions. We will use the resulting panels of data to measure and compare social mobility between 1850 and 1911.
To achieve this aim we need to reach three intermediate objectives
1. Creation of longitudinal panels of men aged
2. Classification of occupations of fathers and sons into a unified social class schema appropriate for comparison between the three countries. We will start by measuring social class using the widely used Registrar General’s
3. Modelling of occupational transitions between generations in a comparable way in each of the three countries. The occupational distribution of the three countries was both different and changing. We will use methods that adjust for these differences over time and space.