A Social Indicator Model of Changes in the Occupational Structure of the United States: 1947-1974

Abstract

This paper presents a ten-equation dynamic structural equation model that shows how aggregate changes in the occupational structure of the United States affect each other and are affected by economic, technological and institutional changes. The model postulates a recursive flow of causation from changes in sectorial (agricultural, manufacturing, services) demand and productivity to changes in the distribution of occupations by sector, bureaucratization and status level. Model equations are estimated on annual national data from 1947 to 1972 and are used to make conditional forecasts of the endogenous variables for 1973 and 1974. The equations fit the observed data well, lack demonstrable autocorrelation of disturbances, and forecast the 1973 and 1974 values with considerable accuracy. Empirically, the modelfacilitates the quantitative estimation of the relative effects of economic growth and technological change on expansion of the service economy, bureaucratization of jobs, and growth of high-status occupations. In particular, when combined with recent findings on the sources of intergenerational occupational mobility in twentieth-century American society by Hauser et al. (1975), the model shows how changes in the pattern of economic growth and productivity from that which has prevailed for most of the post-World War II period may imply a decline in the rates of upward occupational mobility in the absence of other counterbalancing structural changes.