Edited by Vegard Iversen, Professor of Development Economics and Head of the Livelihoods and Institutions Department, Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich, Anirudh Krishna, Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Duke University, and Kunal Sen, Director, UNU-WIDER

Vegard Iversen is Professor of Development Economics and Head of the Livelihoods and Institutions Department, Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich. After completing his PhD in development economics from University of Cambridge in 2000, he was tenured faculty at School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia until he moved to India in 2006. While living and working in India he was a Research Fellow in IFPRI's New Delhi office, a visiting faculty member at Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi), a Professor and Vice Dean at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, an Adjunct Professor at Sanford School of Public Policy's Duke Semester in India programme and a Professor in the Economics Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He received the Annual Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for the best article in Journal of Development Studies in 2008 and has served on the journal's editorial board since 2016.

Anirudh Krishna is the Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. He received his PhD in government from Cornell University in 2000, and a Master's in economics from Delhi University in 1980. Professor Krishna's research investigates how poor communities and individuals in developing countries cope with the structural and personal constraints that result in poverty and powerlessness. Before returning to academia in 2000, he spent 14 years with the Indian Administrative Service, managing diverse rural and urban development initiatives. He received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in 2011; the Olaf Palme Visiting Professorship from the Swedish Research Council in 2007; the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize in 2005 and 2013; and a best article award of the American Political Science Association in 2002.

Kunal Sen has over three decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research. He is the author of eight books and the editor of five volumes on the economics and political economy of development. He is Director of UNU-WIDER in Helsinki, and is a Professor of development economics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. Professor Sen is a leading international expert on the political economy of growth and development. He has performed extensive research on international finance, the political economy determinants of inclusive growth, the dynamics of poverty, social exclusion, female labour force participation, and the informal sector in developing economies. His research has focused on India, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. He was awarded the Sanjaya Lall Prize in 2006 and the Dudley Seers Prize in 2003 for his publications.

Jere R. Behrman, University of Pennsylvania
Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis
M. Shahe Emran, Columbia University
Gary Fields, Cornell University
Patricia Funjika, University of Zambia
Anthony Heath, University of Oxford
Rachel M. Gisselquist, UNU-WIDER
Himanshu, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Vegard Iversen, University of Greenwich
Ravi Kanbur
Anirudh Krishna, Duke University
Peter Lanjouw, VU University, Amsterdam
Yaojun Li, Manchester University
Nancy Luke, Pennsylvania State University
Anandi Mani, Blavatnik School of Government
Patrizio Piraino, University of Notre Dame
Emily Rains, Duke University
Emma Riley, University of Oxford
Kunal Sen, UNU-WIDER
Forhad Shilpi, World Bank
Florencia Torche, Stanford University
Divya Vaid, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Yizhang Zhao, Cardiff University

"This collection of essays offers valuable insights on the measurement and meaning of social mobility both as an inherent part of economic development and as a valued outcome. This careful framing and measurement of an inherently long-term process, fraught with challenges even when the best data are available, deepens our understanding of equality of opportunity in a wide variety of countries and circumstances. This book will certainly be a valuable touchstone encouraging more research and thinking about the relationship between growth and mobility." - Miles Corak, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Social or economic mobility may well be the most important of all concepts related to social wellbeing, but it is also the most challenging, both conceptually and empirically. In this book, Iversen, Krishna, and Sen have assembled an all-star interdisciplinary group of authors who deftly navigate the labyrinth of different meanings, measures, and dimensions of mobility in the challenging context of low- and middle-income countries. The diversity of methods and perspectives is a real strength of this important contribution." - Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies, London School of Economics

"How can people in developing countries attain a better life? How secure are their achievements? Can they avert catastrophic descents into enduring impoverishment? What enables or impedes their upward social mobility, and what interventions might reduce (and prevent the widening of) social and economic inequalities? From diverse disciplinary perspectives, the studies in this book provide vital insights into the challenges of studying and comprehending social mobility in developing countries—and underline the urgency of highlighting the ever-shifting risks and precarity with which most people must grapple in their daily endeavours to sustain (and perhaps even enhance) their wellbeing." - Patricia Jeffery, Professor Emerita in Sociology, University of Edinburgh