The relative mobility enjoyed by locksmiths (such as Saul) in Auschwitz emerges in testimony in "Shoah".
"Yet despite all this expansion and reform, inequalities in relative mobility chances have remained little altered".
If so, you might favor less relative mobility, other things remaining equal.
And Stevenson's hands, which are constantly fluttering like the wings of a bird, are a reminder that her relative mobility is only temporary.
If the aim is to increase mobility by creating a greater equality in relative mobility chances, what can be achieved through educational policy alone is limited – far more so than politicians find it convenient to suppose.
While politicians discuss social mobility as a pain-free goal, the unspoken, uncomfortable truth is that relative mobility is a zero-sum game.
If we want more poor kids climbing the ladder of relative mobility, we need more rich kids sliding down the chutes.
Relative mobility, in contrast, is a measure of which rung of the income ladder a person lands on, compared with his or her parents' position.
But improving rates of upward relative mobility from the bottom comes with a sting in the tail: it requires more downward mobility from the top.
Skeptics caution that the studies measure "relative mobility" -- how likely children are to move from their parents' place in the income distribution.
More upward — and thus downward — relative mobility probably means less aggregate happiness, due to habit formation and frame of reference effects.
