Dr. Freda Lynn, along with former colleague Dr. Yongren Shi and former Iowa graduate Dr. Kevin Kiley, recent article "One, True Occupational Ladder?" was published on the . The article reconsiders how Americans perceive the occupational hierarchy.
We find that the apparent consensus around occupational prestige primarily reflects the views of a small group of highly educated Americans. People outside this group deviate from this consensus, but not in systematic ways, leaving the elites’ consensus to dominate. In the end, there’s much less agreement about the status of occupations than estimates have suggested.