CLASSIFICATION SCHEMES AND THE STUDY OF SOCIAL-MOBILITY - A DETAILED EXAMINATION OF THE BLAU-DUNCAN CATEGORIES

The Blau-Duncan system of seventeen occupational categories has freque ntly been used as the basis for the study of social mobility patterns in the contemporary United States. In this paper, we examine the valid ity of these categories by subdividing them in various ways and examin ing the mobility flows in this more detailed classification. Initial l og-linear and cluster analyses using data from the Occupational Change s in a Generation IT (OCG-II) survey suggest that the Blau-Duncan sche me hides certain patterns of social structuration, and we form new cla ssification systems on the basis of these results. However, cross-vali dation analyses using the cumulative General Social Survey data set sh ow that the improvements associated with our schemes do not generalize beyond the OCG-II data. Thus, we recommend continued use of the Blau- Duncan categories, given that they have been employed so often in prev ious work.