Compare methods

	Social Mobility Table	Log-Linear Mobility Model
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Year of origin	1927 (concept); 1970s–1980s (modern analysis)	1970s
Originator	Pitirim Sorokin; refined by Hauser, Hout, Featherman	Leo Goodman; Robert Hauser
Type	Cross-classification of social origins by destinations	Log-linear / Poisson model for cell counts in mobility tables
Seminal source	Hauser, R. M. (1978). A structural model of the mobility table. Social Forces, 56(3), 919–953.	Hauser, R. M. (1978). A structural model of the mobility table. Social Forces, 56(3), 919–953.
Aliases	mobility table, intergenerational mobility table, origin-destination table, transition table analysis	log-linear model for mobility, topological mobility model, quasi-independence model, levels model
Related	5	5
Summary	A social mobility table is a cross-classification of individuals by their social origin (typically a parent's class or occupation) and their own destination class, forming the empirical foundation of intergenerational mobility research. Analyzing it separates how much people move between classes, distinguishes movement forced by changing class sizes from genuine exchange, and isolates the underlying origin–destination association that measures the openness of a society.	Log-linear mobility models analyze an origin-by-destination mobility table by modeling the logarithm of its expected cell counts as a sum of terms: separate effects for the origin and destination marginals plus interaction terms that capture the origin–destination association. By specifying that association parametrically — through diagonal, level, or scaled terms — these models test precise hypotheses about the structure of social fluidity independent of the changing sizes of classes.