On the Determination of Occupational Attainment and Mobility

The underlying motivation for much of the research into the determinants of occupational attainment is to enable inferences to be made as to the relative position of various groups at a point in time, or an individual's economic mobility over time. In this paper we compare unordered and ordered discrete choice approaches to estimating models of occupational attainment. Estimates from these methods differ substantially, indicating that the determination of which technique is more appropriate is an important issue. The ordered method appears to be more consistent with the motivation of previous research and requires less computer time. Unordered models, however, are better able to predict occupational distribution.