ArticleQuality & quantity2022
When less conditioning provides better estimates: overcontrol and endogenous selection biases in research on intergenerational mobility.
Article in Quality & quantity, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- No Partner, No Children? Union Formation, Assortative Mating, and Educational Inequalities in Fertility in Germany.European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie · 2026Article
- Understanding the impact of radiotherapy fractionation on overall survival in a large head and neck squamous cell carcinoma dataset: a comprehensive approach combining mechanistic and machine learning models.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Article
- The summer parental investment gap? Socioeconomic gaps in the seasonality of parental expenditures and time with school-age children.Research in social stratification and mobility · 2023Article
- The Sociocognitive Origins of Personal Mastery.Journal of health and social behavior · 2023Article
- Second Birth Fertility in Germany: Social Class, Gender, and the Role of Economic Uncertainty.European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The counterfactual approach to causality has become the dominant approach to understand causality in contemporary social science research. Whilst most sociologists are aware that unobserved, confounding variables may bias the estimates of causal effects (omitted variable bias), the threats of overcontrol and endogenous selection biases are less well known. In particular, widely used practices in research on intergenerational mobility are affected by these biases. I review four of these practices from the viewpoint of the counterfactual approach to causality and show why overcontrol and endogenous selection biases arise when these practices are implemented. I use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) to demonstrate the practical consequences of these biases for conclusions about intergenerational mobility. I conclude that future research on intergenerational mobility should reflect more upon the possibilities of bias introduced by conditioning on variables.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.