Working Paper: NBER ID: w19843
Authors: Raj Chetty; Nathaniel Hendren; Patrick Kline; Emmanuel Saez
Abstract: We use administrative records on the incomes of more than 40 million children and their parents to describe three features of intergenerational mobility in the United States. First, we characterize the joint distribution of parent and child income at the national level. The conditional expectation of child income given parent income is linear in percentile ranks. On average, a 10 percentile increase in parent income is associated with a 3.4 percentile increase in a child's income. Second, intergenerational mobility varies substantially across areas within the U.S. For example, the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4% in Charlotte but 12.9% in San Jose. Third, we explore the factors correlated with upward mobility. High mobility areas have (1) less residential segregation, (2) less income inequality, (3) better primary schools, (4) greater social capital, and (5) greater family stability. While our descriptive analysis does not identify the causal mechanisms that determine upward mobility, the publicly available statistics on intergenerational mobility developed here can facilitate future research on such mechanisms.
Keywords: intergenerational mobility; income distribution; economic opportunity
JEL Codes: H0; J0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
Cause | Effect |
---|---|
parent income (D31) | child income rank (J13) |
commuting zones (R23) | upward mobility (J62) |
lower residential segregation (R23) | higher upward mobility (J62) |
less income inequality (D31) | higher upward mobility (J62) |
better primary schools (A21) | higher upward mobility (J62) |
greater social capital (Z13) | higher upward mobility (J62) |
more stable family structures (J12) | higher upward mobility (J62) |