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.read more
Citations
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Household Saving, Class Identity, and Conspicuous Consumption
TL;DR: The saving rate for U.S. households has long been low relative to those in other wealthy countries and in recent decades this rate has plummeted as discussed by the authors, and most studies of household saving behavior are based on the assumption that saving behavior is determined by a single person.
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Equalization or Selection? Reassessing the “Meritocratic Power” of a College Degree in Intergenerational Income Mobility:
TL;DR: This paper found that intergenerational mobility is higher among college graduates than among people with lower levels of education, and they characterized a college degree as a great e ciency for the future.
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Rich Dad, Smart Dad: Decomposing the Intergenerational Transmission of Income
TL;DR: This article decompose the intergenerational income elasticity into the causal effect of financial resources, the mechanistic transmission of human capital, and the role that human capital plays in the determination of father's permanent income.
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Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and Equality of Opportunity in South Africa
TL;DR: In this article, the degree of intergenerational earnings persistence in South Africa was estimated using microdata from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) and the evidence provided for South Africa is consistent with the hypothesis that low levels of inter-generational mobility and equality of opportunity are characteristic of high-inequality emerging economies.
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Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States
TL;DR: Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, a combine of parametric and nonparametric methods is used to reveal how family structure moderates intergenerational income mobility in the United States, finding that individuals raised outside stable two-parent homes are much more mobile than individuals from stable three-parent families.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational Mobility
Gary S. Becker,Nigel Tomes +1 more
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.
Posted Content
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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.