Meritocracy and inherited advantage in the United States

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Comerford, David and Rodríguez Mora, José V. and Watts, Michael J. (2026) Meritocracy and inherited advantage in the United States. Regional Studies, 60 (1). 2634153. ISSN 0034-3404 (https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2026.2634153)

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Abstract

We fit a model to US regional data on income, inequality and intergenerational mobility to derive ‘meritocracy’ and ‘advantage’: high meritocracy implies local labour markets reward human capital; high advantage implies they reward class background. We then characterise how these indices correlate with observable characteristics of regions, finding intuitive results which correlate with common understanding of these terms. Finally, we show there is information in the model: our indices provide extra explanatory power for voting behaviour in the United States. We conclude that using our model to interpret the data at the regional level reveals new insights into regional characteristics.

ORCID iDs

Comerford, David ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5541-736X, Rodríguez Mora, José V. and Watts, Michael J.;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)