Working Paper: NBER ID: w23395
Authors: William J. Collins; Marianne H. Wanamaker
Abstract: We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000 by building new historical datasets for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and combining them with modern data to cover the middle and late twentieth century. We find large disparities in mobility, with white children having far better chances of escaping the bottom of the distribution than black children in every generation. This mobility gap was more important in proximately determining each generation’s racial gap than was the initial gap in parents’ economic status.
Keywords: intergenerational mobility; racial disparities; economic status; black men; white men
JEL Codes: J15; J62; N31; N32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Fathers' economic status (J12) | Sons' mobility outcomes (J62) |
| Racial differences in mobility patterns (R23) | Racial mobility gap (J62) |
| Mobility patterns of black sons (J62) | Upward mobility compared to white sons (J62) |
| Position of black fathers in income deciles (D31) | Upward mobility for black sons (J62) |
| Upward mobility patterns of black sons (J62) | Average labor market outcomes for black sons (J79) |