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The Structure of Inequality and the Process of Attainment
Abstract
This paper proposes a model for the process of attaining occupational status and income, where change in attainment is generated by the creation of vacant positions in social structure. The distribution of attainments, or the structure of inequality, is assumedfixed and is described by a simple exponential or geometric distribution function (depending on whether attainment levels are assumed discrete or continuous). Persons leaving the labor force create chains of vacancies in this structure that present mobility opportunities for persons entering the labor force. The implications of the model for the attainment process derived from these considerations for status attainment research and stochastic models for job mobility are discussed.
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Citations
Cited by
The Cross-National Diversity of Corporate Governance: Dimensions and Determinants
Aguilera, R. V., & Jackson, G. (2003) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.2003.10196772 · Cited by 1,607
Social Resources and Strength of Ties: Structural Factors in Occupational Status Attainment
Lin, N., Ensel, W. M., & Vaughn, J. C. (2019) · Social Capital, Social Support and Stratification · doi:10.4337/9781789907285.00008 · Cited by 1,019
Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology
Hedstrom, P. (2005) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511488801 · Cited by 816
(2005) · Cited by 772
Robust Identities or Nonentities? Typecasting in the Feature‐Film Labor Market
Zuckerman, E. W., Kim, T., Ukanwa, K., & von Rittmann, J. (2003) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/377518 · Cited by 590
Metadata
- Authors
- Sorensen, A. B.
- Venue
- American Sociological Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1977-12
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 965
- ISSN
- 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2010823942
- Cited by
- 232
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 7.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Structure of Inequality and the Process of Attainment. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2094580
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- Sorensen, A. B. (1977). The Structure of Inequality and the Process of Attainment. American Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094580
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
