Richard Breen : Annual Report 2001-2002

Richard Breen (Official Fellow) has continued working with Ruud Luijkx (University of Tilburg) on the comparative analysis of mobility tables covering 12 countries over the period 1970-2000. This is the concluding part of his project 'National Patterns of Social Mobility 1970-2000: Convergence or Divergence?' which began three years ago at the European University Institute. The main output will be a book with Oxford University Press in 2003. Most of his other work has been, in one way or another, related to the mobility project. Together with Janne Jonsson (Swedish Institute for Social Research) he has been investigating new methods for relating cohort and period change in mobility (and other) analyses; and with David Firth he has begun to explore new methods for measuring social fluidity in mobility tables. He has also maintained his interest in formal models of social phenomena. With his D Phil student Lynn Cooke he wrote a paper using game theory to explain the sexual division of domestic labour, he has continued working on models to explain educational decision making and in April he gave a paper at the Swedish Centre for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala, on 'Shared Beliefs'. He managed to shed some responsibilities during 2001: his membership of the executive board of Research Committee 28 (Social Stratification and Mobility) came to an end as did his term as secretary of the European Consortium for Sociological Research. He continues to serve as a member of the Scientific Committee of the Juan March Institute, Madrid. In 2002 he was invited to join the Editorial Board of the American Sociological Review and was elected to membership of Academia Europaea.

Publications

'Statistics of Selection Bias' in The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Kidlington, Oxfordshire: Elsevier, 2001.

'Social Mobility and Constitutional and Political Preferences in Northern Ireland' The British Journal of Sociology, 52, 2001.

(with Marlis Buchmann) 'Institutional Variation and the Position of Young People: A Comparative Perspective', The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 580, 2002.