Tue 5 May 2026, 17:30-18:30 BST
Location: Moray House School of Education and Sport, Patterson’s Land LG.34, Edinburgh
Join Morah House for CEID Visiting Scholar Professor Soo-yong Byun’s public lecture. Professor Byun is Professor of Education, Demography, and Asian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. He will be presenting his recent comparative work examining adolescents’ expected occupational status in the UK and USA using data from the 2000-2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. A focus is given to gaps by socio-economic status (SES) to identify changes to inequality in each country over time.
Using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from 2000-2018, this study examined changes in U.S. adolescents’ expected occupational status, the socioeconomic status (SES) gradient, and distributional SES differentials, and compared these trends with the United Kingdom. Guided by Turner’s (1960) distinction between contest and sponsored mobility systems, we found rising overall expectations in both countries between 2010 and 2018. When accounting for academic achievement, SES gradients remained stable in both contexts. Distributional analyses revealed persistent SES compression at the upper end in the United States and narrowing upper-end gaps in the United Kingdom. Cross-national differences in overall levels, SES gradients, and distributional patterns diminished over time. Together, these findings underscore the contemporary relevance of mobility regime theory.