Working Paper: NBER ID: w29289
Authors: Elisa J. Come; Ilyana Kuziemko; Suresh Naidu
Abstract: We estimate long-run trends in intergenerational relative mobility for representative samples of the U.S.-born population. Harmonizing all surveys that include father's occupation and own family income, we develop a mobility measure that allows for the inclusion of non-whites and women for the 1910s–1970s birth cohorts. We show that mobility increases between the 1910s and 1940s cohorts and that the decline of Black-white income gaps explains about half of this rise. We also find that excluding Black Americans, particularly women, considerably overstates the level of mobility for twentieth-century birth cohorts while simultaneously understating its increase between the 1910s and 1940s.
Keywords: intergenerational mobility; income distribution; race; gender
JEL Codes: H0; J15; J16; N3
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| intergenerational relative mobility (J62) | increase from the 1910s to the 1940s (N92) |
| decline in black-white income gaps (J79) | increase in intergenerational relative mobility (J62) |
| excluding black Americans (J15) | overestimation of mobility levels for 20th-century birth cohorts (J62) |
| excluding black Americans (J15) | underestimation of increase in mobility between the 1910s and 1940s (N93) |
| black Americans (J15) | outsized influence on overall mobility measures (J62) |
| flattening of income slope among white Americans (D31) | changes observed in mobility (J62) |