Still no compelling evidence that Americans overestimate upward socio-economic mobility rates: Reply to Davidai & Gilovich (2018) (original) (raw)
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Judgment and Decision Making, 2018
Davidai and Gilovich (2018) contend that (a) Americans tend to think about their nation's income distribution in terms of quintiles (fifths), and (b) when Americans' perceptions of socioeconomic mobility rates are measured properly (e.g., by asking online survey respondents to guess upward-mobility rates across quintiles), a trend of overestimation (too much optimism concerning the number of people who manage to transcend poverty) will emerge. In this reply, we hail Davidai and Gilovich's new data as novel, important, and relevant to the former (a), but we doubt that they can support the latter (b) claim about population-level (in)accuracy. Namely, we note that even if mobility-rate perceptions could be measured perfectly, inferences about the accuracy of those perceptions still depend on a particular comparator-a point-estimate of the "true" rate of upward social mobility in the U.S. against which survey respondents' guesses are evaluated-that is itself an error-prone estimate. Applying different established comparators to survey respondents' guesses changes both the direction and magnitude of previously observed overestimation effects. We conclude with a challenge: researchers who wish to compute the average distance between socioeconomic perceptions and socioeconomic reality must first select and justify a fair comparator.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2018
Davidai and Gilovich (2018) contend that (a) Americans tend to think about their nation's income distribution in terms of quintiles (fifths), and (b) when Americans' perceptions of socioeconomic mobility rates are measured properly (e.g., by asking online survey respondents to guess upward-mobility rates across quintiles), a trend of overestimation (too much optimism concerning the number of people who manage to transcend poverty) will emerge. In this reply, we hail Davidai and Gilovich's new data as novel, important, and relevant to the former (a), but we doubt that they can support the latter (b) claim about population-level (in)accuracy. Namely, we note that even if mobility-rate perceptions could be measured perfectly, inferences about the accuracy of those perceptions still depend on a particular comparator-a point-estimate of the "true" rate of upward social mobility in the U.S. against which survey respondents' guesses are evaluated-that is itself an error-prone estimate. Applying different established comparators to survey respondents' guesses changes both the direction and magnitude of previously observed overestimation effects. We conclude with a challenge: researchers who wish to compute the average distance between socioeconomic perceptions and socioeconomic reality must first select and justify a fair comparator.
How should we measure Americans’ perceptions of socio-economic mobility?
Judgment and Decision Making, 2017
Several scholars have suggested that Americans’ (distorted) beliefs about the rate of upward social mobility in the United States may affect political judgment and decision-making outcomes. In this article, we consider the psychometric properties of two different questionnaire items that researchers have used to measure these subjective perceptions. Namely, we report the results of a new set of experiments (N = 2,167 U.S. MTurkers) in which we compared the question wording employed by Chambers, Swan and Heesacker (2015) with the question wording employed by Davidai and Gilovich (2015). Each (independent) research team had prompted similar groups of respondents to estimate the percentage of Americans born into the bottom of the income distribution who improved their socio-economic standing by adulthood, yet the two teams reached ostensibly irreconcilable conclusions: that Americans tend to underestimate (Chambers et al.) and overestimate (Davidai & Gilovich) the true rate of upward...
Americans overestimate social class mobility
In this research we examine estimates of American social class mobility—the ability to move up or down in education and income status. Across studies, overestimates of class mobility were large and particularly likely among younger participants and those higher in subjective social class—both measured (Studies 1-3) and manipulated (Study 4). Class mobility overestimates were independent of general estimation errors (Study 3) and persisted after accounting for knowledge of class mobility assessed in terms of educational attainment and self-ratings. Experiments revealed that mobility overestimates were shaped by exposure to information about the genetic determinants of social class—a faux science article suggesting genetic constraints to economic advancement increased accuracy in class mobility estimates (Study 2)—and motivated by needs to protect the self—heightening the self-relevance of class mobility increased overestimates (Study 3). Discussion focused on both the costs and benefits of overestimates of class mobility for individuals and society.
How should we measure Americans’ perceptions of socio-economic mobility?
Judgment and Decision Making, 2017
Several scholars have suggested that Americans' (distorted) beliefs about the rate of upward social mobility in the United States may affect political judgment and decision-making outcomes. In this article, we consider the psychometric properties of two different questionnaire items that researchers have used to measure these subjective perceptions. Namely, we report the results of a new set of experiments (N = 2,167 U.S. MTurkers) in which we compared the question wording employed by Chambers, Swan and Heesacker (2015) with the question wording employed by Davidai and Gilovich (2015). Each (independent) research team had prompted similar groups of respondents to estimate the percentage of Americans born into the bottom of the income distribution who improved their socioeconomic standing by adulthood, yet the two teams reached ostensibly irreconcilable conclusions: that Americans tend to underestimate (Chambers et al.) and overestimate (Davidai & Gilovich) the true rate of upward social mobility in the U.S. First, we successfully reproduced both contradictory results. Next, we isolated and experimentally manipulated one salient difference between the two questions' response-option formats: asking participants to divide the population into either (a) "thirds" (tertiles) or (b) "20%" segments (quintiles). Inverting this tertile-quintile factor significantly altered both teams' findings, suggesting that these measures are inappropriate (too vulnerable to question-wording and item-formulation artifacts) for use in studies of perceptual (in)accuracy. Finally, we piloted a new question for measuring subjective perceptions of social mobility. We conclude with tentative recommendations for researchers who wish to model the causes and consequences of Americans' mobility-related beliefs.
Perceptions of U.S. Social Mobility Are Divided (and Distorted) Along Ideological Lines
Psychological science, 2015
The ability to move upward in social class or economic position (i.e., social mobility) is a defining feature of the American Dream, yet recent public-opinion polls indicate that many Americans are losing confidence in the essential fairness of the system and their opportunities for financial advancement. In two studies, we examined Americans' perceptions of both current levels of mobility in the United States and temporal trends in mobility, and we compared these perceptions with objective indicators to determine perceptual accuracy. Overall, participants underestimated current mobility and erroneously concluded that mobility has declined over the past four decades. These misperceptions were more pronounced among politically liberal participants than among politically moderate or conservative ones. These perception differences were accounted for by liberals' relative dissatisfaction with the current social system, social hierarchies, and economic inequality. These findings ...
Perception of Inequality and Social Mobility
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
This paper explores the perceptions of inequality and their associations with social mobility exploiting the ISSP and LiTS crosscountry data sets. These perceptions vary across countries as well as across individuals within countries. We try to explain this variation by examining the diverse opportunities for vertical social mobility available to individuals. The main research question raised in the paper is whether our perception of income differentiation is driven by experience of past mobility and availability of the upward leading instruments. In other words, is a more socially mobile society more tolerant to income inequality than a less mobile and segmented one? The intuitive answer seems to be an obvious "yes", but empirical evidence is still scarce.
Better Off Than We Know: Distorted Perceptions of Incomes and Income Inequality in America
Psychological Science, 2014
Norton and Ariely surprised social scientists and laypersons alike with the claim that Americans on both sides of the political aisle tend to grossly underestimate wealth inequality in the United States. The data Norton and Ariely presented were indeed quite striking: When asked to guess the percentage of wealth owned by each quintile of the population from richest to poorest, participants misjudged by substantial margins the top (59% estimated vs. 84% actual) and bottom (4% estimated vs. 0.1% actual) of the distribution. Both errors favored equality, and overall participants moved wealth from the top quintile to the bottom three quintiles. Moreover, most participants, irrespective of their political affiliations, reported that they would be happier living in a country with even greater equality than indicated by their too-generous estimates. Thus, according to Norton and Ariely, the welter of highly visible disagreements between liberal and conservative policymakers concerning the optimal distribution of wealth may actually belie an underlying (and decidedly liberal) consensus among the American public. Recent evidence suggests that Norton and Ariely's (2011) provocative findings may reflect a large degree of measurement error. Specifically, Eriksson and Simpson (2012) compared Norton and Ariely's method-asking study participants to grasp the abstract concept of aggregated net worth across households (i.e., the percentage of the country's overall wealth owned by each quintile)with a method involving a logically equivalent but computationally simpler criterion-the average wealth of individual households within a given quintile. They found that the latter (average) method yielded dramatically higher estimates of wealth inequality than the former (percentage) approach. More important, by showing that this same measurement disparity also occurs in other domains with high levels of inequality (e.g., the number of visits to various Web pages), Eriksson and Simpson revealed a likely source of the difference: the welldocumented anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic (see Chapman & Johnson, 2002), which causes people to estimate and (under)adjust an unknown quantity relative to an anchor point. 1
Are Earnings Inequality and Mobility Overstated? The Impact of Nonclassical Measurement Error
Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010
Measures of inequality and mobility based on self-reported earnings re ‡ect attributes of both the joint distribution of earnings across time and the joint distribution of measurement error and earnings. While classical measurement error would increase measures of inequality and mobility there is substantial evidence that measurement error in earnings is not classical. In this paper we present the analytical links between non-classical measurement error and measures of inequality and mobility. The empirical importance of non-classical measurement error is explored using the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to tax records. We …nd that the e¤ects of non-classical measurement error are large. However, these non-classical e¤ects are largely o¤setting when estimating mobility. As a result SIPP estimates of mobility are similar to estimates based on tax records, though SIPP estimates of inequality are smaller than estimates based on tax records.
International Migration Review, 2022
Research on intergenerational income mobility is increasingly popular. A neglected aspect of these studies, however, is the difference between their target populations (i.e., the populations that researchers wish to learn about) and the populations that their samples represent. In studies of intergenerational income mobility, third-and-higher generation persons are often overrepresented, while 1.5- and second-generation persons, particularly undocumented 1.5-generation immigrants, are underrepresented. We provide an analytic framework for adjusting for this underrepresentation. In this article, we illustrate our method, using data on the experiences of two US birth cohorts. We find that within one US cohort, the underrepresentation of 1.5- and second-generation persons does not substantially bias intergenerational income mobility estimates. However, inferences about change across cohorts are more affected by the underrepresentation of 1.5- and second-generation persons because their population shares have grown. We discuss how our approach can be applied to other settings, including other countries and cross-country comparisons, where migration differences might lead the underrepresentation of 1.5- and second-generation persons to substantially affect researchers’ understandings of income mobility differences. We also outline avenues for future research at the intersection of immigration and intergenerational stratification.