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Journal ArticleDOI

Fortunate Sons: New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Using Social Security Earnings Data

TLDR
This article found that intergenerational mobility is significantly lower for families with little or no wealth, offering empirical support for theoretical models that predict differences due to borrowing constraints, suggesting that the United States is substantially less mobile than previous research indicated.
Abstract
Previous studies, relying on short-term averages of fathers' earnings, have estimated the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) in earnings to be approximately 0.4. Due to persistent transitory fluctuations, these estimates have been biased down by approximately 30% or more. Using administrative data containing the earnings histories of parents and children, the IGE is estimated to be around 0.6. This suggests that the United States is substantially less mobile than previous research indicated. Estimates of intergenerational mobility are significantly lower for families with little or no wealth, offering empirical support for theoretical models that predict differences due to borrowing constraints.

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Citations
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Trends in Intergenerational Income Mobility in Sweden

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors exploit newly available data to extend existing estimates for Sweden using parental incomes starting in 1960 and offspring income up until 2007, and explore their robustness to measurement problems that stem from variations in the income process across the life cycle.

Mobility: consequences for cross-country comparisons*

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the patterns of intergenerational earnings mobility in Denmark, Finland and Norway, unlike those for the US and the UK, are highly nonlinear.
Journal ArticleDOI

Intergenerational Occupational Persistence across the Worlds of Welfare in the EU

TL;DR: To άρθρο αυτό διeρeυνά τη δαγeνeακή συσχέτιση του eπαγγeλματικού στο πλαίσιο των τeσσάρων κ
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A meta-analysis of the association between income inequality and intergenerational mobility

TL;DR: In this article, an overview of associations between income inequality and intergenerational mobility in the United States, Canada, and eight European countries is provided. But, the authors focus on the top 1 percent of the income distribution.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational Mobility

TL;DR: The theory of inequality and intergenerational mobility presented in this paper assumes that each family maximizes a utility function spanning several generations, which depends on the consumption of parents and on the quantity and quality of their children.
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Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States

TL;DR: For example, this article showed that the intergenerational correlation in long-run income is at least 0.4, indicating dramatically less mobility than suggested by earlier research, indicating less mobility.
Posted ContentDOI

Human Capital Policy

TL;DR: This paper showed the importance of cognitive and non-cognitive skills that are formed early in the life cycle in accounting for racial, ethnic and family background gaps in schooling and other dimensions of socioeconomic success.
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Least absolute deviations estimation for the censored regression model

TL;DR: In this paper, an alternative to maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters of the censored regression (or censored 'Tobit' model) is proposed, which is a generalization of least absolute deviations estimation for the standard linear model, and is also robust to heteroscedasticity.
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The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Black, Hispanic, and White Males

TL;DR: The authors found that the long-run factors associated with parental background and family environment, and not credit constraints facing prospective students in the college-going years, account for most of the racial and ethnic disparities in college attendance.