CID Speaker Series: Janeria Easley

Feb 5, 2025

Tuesday, February 25

10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Intergenerational Mobility: Racial Disparities in Mobility from a Holistic Perspective

Join the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics as Janeria Easley, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, Emory University, presents, “Intergenerational Mobility: Racial Disparities in Mobility from a Holistic Perspective.”

Abstract: Domain-specific intergenerational elasticities of parent and child attainment, such as those capturing the relationship between parent’s education and child’s education, have been the ruling practice for studies of mobility since Blau and Duncan (1967). This practice has yielded very different conclusions about the extent of intergenerational persistence in the United States, with estimates ranging from .64 for neighborhood mobility to as low as .32 for occupation. We utilize the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to develop latent variables we term “origin profile” and “destination profile” based on five indicators: occupation, income, education, wealth, and neighborhood socioeconomic status. We find that Black White disparities in mobility between origin and destination profiles are quite profound.



Janeria Easley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and English from Duke University and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology, with a concentration in Demography, from Princeton University.
 
Her research and teaching expertise lie at the intersections of racial and ethnic relations, demography, social stratification, urban studies, and media studies. Broadly, her scholarship deepens the understanding of racial stratification through two key areas.
 
To begin, she investigates the role of space and place as central drivers of racial inequality, uncovering the mechanisms that link geography to structural racism. Her work highlights how residential segregation, concentrated poverty, and race-based disinvestment shape socioeconomic outcomes for Black communities.
 
In addition, her research advances new insights into racial disparities in economic well-being, particularly in mobility, employment, wealth, and homeownership. By incorporating intergenerational analyses and immigrant comparisons, she reveals two critical patterns. On one hand, racialized barriers extend beyond U.S.-born Black populations, challenging the notion that certain Black immigrant groups experience economic mobility free from racism. On the other, these barriers persist across generations, continuously reproducing inequality over time. Her work underscores the cumulative nature of racial disadvantage and provides a more comprehensive portrait of inequality, informing policy solutions aimed at disrupting these entrenched disparities.
 
Dr. Easley previously served as a Vice Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including Urban Studies, Housing Policy Debate, and the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.

Learn more about Janeira and her work.

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