Socioeconomic careers involve a process of attainment. One model that explicitly recognizes this is a simple linear differential equation model. This article shows how such a model can be used to describe careers in terms of entry levels and their determinants, potential levels and their determinants, and the rate of achievement. Such models, while conceptually simple, have some statistical complications over the usual models used when it comes time to estimate them. The second half of the article describes some of these complications and ways of dealing with them.
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