IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-732527.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mobility for All: Representative Intergenerational Mobility Estimates over the Twentieth Century

Author

Listed:
  • Elisa Jácome
  • Ilyana Kuziemko
  • Suresh Naidu

Abstract

We estimate long-run trends in intergenerational relative mobility for representative samples of the US-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 nonwhite individuals 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Elisa Jácome & Ilyana Kuziemko & Suresh Naidu, 2025. "Mobility for All: Representative Intergenerational Mobility Estimates over the Twentieth Century," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 133(1), pages 306-354.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/732527
    DOI: 10.1086/732527
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732527
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732527
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/732527?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/732527. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.