The consequences of social mobility have been a persistent theme on the research agenda of social scientists, but the estimation of the net mobility effect controlling for both social origin and destination confronts with the identification problem. This research 1) highlights the mechanical identification approaches deployed by the conventional methods—the square additive model, the diamond model, and the diagonal reference model; 2) draws on the directional acyclic graphs to present an identification framework that is based on the intermediate variables; and 3) elaborates the specific identification strategies in typical research scenarios: independent mechanism, joint mechanism, partial mechanism, and intermediate confounded mechanism. The results of the Monte Carlo simulations suggest that the mechanism-based identification approach helps to obtain an unbiased estimate of the net mobility effect.

中文翻译：

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基于前门准则的起点和终点社会流动网络的影响建模：一项模拟研究

社会流动的后果一直是社会科学家研究议程上的一个持久主题，但控制社会起源和目的地的净流动效应的估计面临识别问题。本研究 1) 重点介绍了传统方法所采用的机械识别方法——方形加法模型、菱形模型和对角线参考模型；2）利用有向无环图，提出一个基于中间变量的识别框架；3）阐述了典型研究场景下的具体识别策略：独立机制、联合机制、部分机制和中间混杂机制。