After arriving at Nuffield, he co-directed the Nuffield Social Mobility study of 1972, which introduced the loglinear modelling of social class mobility tables, leading to the crucial distinction between absolute and relative mobility rates. Several prevailing views about mobility in mid-twentieth century Britain were challenged. During the 1980s he worked with Robert Erikson and Walter Müller on the CASMIN project – a cross-national comparative study of intergenerational class mobility. On the basis of further technical innovations in the analysis of mobility tables, Erikson and Goldthorpe developed the concept of a ‘core model’ of such mobility, which, they suggested, was prevalent, with national-specific variations, across all advanced industrial societies.