Patterns of Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Earnings

TLDR

The study characterizes intergenerational mobility patterns in the U.S. using matched parent/child data from the National Longitudinal Surveys and examines how family background characteristics influence mobility. The authors analyze matched parent/child pairs from the National Longitudinal Surveys to assess intergenerational income and earnings mobility. They find that mobility is neither perfect nor absent, with parents’ log income explaining only 9–11% of children’s log income, earnings showing greater mobility—especially for daughters—and adding background variables raising the explained variance by 3–5 percentage points.

Abstract

This paper characterizes the patterns of intergenerational mobility in the United States using data for matched parent/child pairs from the National Longitudinal Surveys. In general, what is found is far from the extremes of either perfect mobility or perfect immobility. Parents' log income explains only about 9 percent to 11 percent of the variation in children's log incomes. Earnings exhibit more mobility than does total income, and the difference is most striking for daughters. The paper also identifies the influence of family background characteristics on mobility. The addition of these background variables adds another 3 to 5 percent age points to the R2 in the intergenerational earnings and income regressions. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.