Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but 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. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. 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-which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines--typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern.Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?

Table of Contents:
PART I. INTRODUCTION 1: Vegard Iversen, Anirudh Krishna, and Kunal Sen: The state of knowledge about social mobility in the developing world PART II: THEORY AND CONCEPTS 2: Patrizio Piraino: Drivers of mobility in the Global South 3: Gary Fields: Exploring concepts of social mobility 4: Vegard Iversen: Social mobility in developing countries: Measurement and downward mobility pitfalls 5: Ravi Kanbur: In praise of snapshots PART III: TYPES OF MOBILITY 6: Himanshu and Peter Lanjouw: Income mobility in the developing world: Recent approaches and evidence 7: Florencia Torche: Educational mobility in the developing world 8: Anthony Heath and Yizhang Zhao: Rethinking occupational mobility in developing countries: Conceptual issues and empirical findings PART IV: DIALOGUE ON MEASUREMENT AND METHODS 9: M. Shahe Emran and Forhad Shilpi: Economic approach to intergenerational mobility: Measures, methods, and challenges in developing countries 10: Yaojun Li: Social mobility in China: A case study of social mobility research in the Global South 11: Divya Vaid: Ethnography and social mobility: A review 12: Gregory Clark: Measuring social mobility in historic and less developed societies PART V: DRIVERS AND INHIBITORS 13: Jere Behrman: Social mobility and human capital in low- and middle-income countries 14: Anirudh Krishna and Emily Rains: Informalities, volatility, and precarious social mobility in urban slums 15: Nancy Luke: Gender and social mobility: Exploring gender attitudes and women's labour force participation 16: Patricia Funjika and Rachel M. Gisselquist: Social mobility and horizontal inequality 17: Anandi Mani and Emma Riley: Social networks as levers of mobility PART VI: CONCLUSIONS 18: Vegard Iversen, Anirudh Krishna, and Kunal Sen: Social mobility in developing countries: Directions for research practice, knowledge gaps and policy support