IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedhwp/wp-03-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Revised estimates of intergenerational income mobility in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Bhashkar Mazumder

Abstract

Solon?s (1992) landmark study estimated the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) in income between fathers and sons to be 0.4 or higher. This dramatically changed the consensus view of the U.S. as a highly mobile society. In this comment, I show both analytically and empirically how Solon and others have actually underestimated this parameter by about 30 percent, suggesting that the IGE is actually close to 0.6 and that the U.S. appears to be among the least mobile countries. There are two key measurement issues that lead researchers to underestimate the IGE. First, the use of short-term averages of fathers? earnings is a poor proxy for lifetime economic status due to highly persistent transitory shocks. Second, the variance of transitory fluctuations to earnings varies considerably by age causing a ?lifecycle? bias when samples include measures of fathers? earnings when they are especially young or old. In this comment Solon?s results are replicated and then re- estimated using a new technique that is able to address these issues using the same PSID sample. The results confirm that the intergenerational elasticity is likely to be around 0.6.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhashkar Mazumder, 2003. "Revised estimates of intergenerational income mobility in the United States," Working Paper Series WP-03-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-03-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/working_papers/2003/wp2003-16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sims,Christopher A. (ed.), 1994. "Advances in Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521444606, July.
    2. Altonji, Joseph G & Segal, Lewis M, 1996. "Small-Sample Bias in GMM Estimation of Covariance Structures," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(3), pages 353-366, July.
    3. Dean R. Hyslop, 2001. "Rising U.S. Earnings Inequality and Family Labor Supply: The Covariance Structure of Intrafamily Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 755-777, September.
    4. David Card, 1990. "Intertemporal Labor Supply: An Assessment," Working Papers 649, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    5. Haider, Steven J, 2001. "Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality of Males in the United States: 1967-1991," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(4), pages 799-836, October.
    6. Sims,Christopher A. (ed.), 1994. "Advances in Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521444590, July.
    7. Bhashkar Mazumder, 2001. "Earnings mobility in the US: a new look at intergenerational inequality," Working Paper Series WP-01-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    8. Abowd, John M & Card, David, 1989. "On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 411-445, March.
    9. David Card, 1990. "Intertemporal Labor Supply: An Assessment," Working Papers 649, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hendricks, Lutz, 2007. "The intergenerational persistence of lifetime earnings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 125-144, January.
    2. Jesse Rothstein & Nathan Wozny, 2013. "Permanent Income and the Black-White Test Score Gap," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(3), pages 510-544.
    3. Maribel Jiménez, 2011. "Un Análisis Empírico de las No Linealidades en la Movilidad Intergeneracional del Ingreso. El caso de la Argentina," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0114, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    4. Muller, Seán M., 2010. "Another problem in the estimation of intergenerational income mobility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 291-295, September.
    5. repec:rza:wpaper:075 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhashkar Mazumder, 2001. "The mis-measurement of permanent earnings: new evidence from Social Security earnings data," Working Paper Series WP-01-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    2. Eric French, 2004. "The Labor Supply Response to (Mismeasured but) Predictable Wage Changes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 602-613, May.
    3. Dean R. Hyslop, 2001. "Rising U.S. Earnings Inequality and Family Labor Supply: The Covariance Structure of Intrafamily Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 755-777, September.
    4. Dwayne Benjamin & Loren Brandt & Jia-Zhueng Fan, 2003. "Ceaseless Toil? Health and Labor Supply of the Elderly in Rural China," Working Papers benjamin-03-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    5. Bhashkar Mazumder, 2001. "Earnings mobility in the US: a new look at intergenerational inequality," Working Paper Series WP-01-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    6. Antonella Trigari, 2006. "The Role of Search Frictions and Bargaining for Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 304, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    7. Adam Looney & Monica Singhal, 2005. "The effect of anticipated tax changes on intertemporal labor supply and the realization of taxable income," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-44, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Kevin X. D. Huang, 2004. "Specific factors meet intermediate inputs : implications for strategic complementarities and persistence," Research Working Paper RWP 04-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    9. Ernst Fehr & Lorenz Goette, 2007. "Do Workers Work More if Wages Are High? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 298-317, March.
    10. Fehr, Ernst & Götte, Lorenz, 2004. "Do Workers Work More When Wages Are High? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 1002, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2007. "The Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence From the German Short School Years," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1216-1242, October.
    12. Libertad González Luna, 2005. "Single mothers and incentives to work: The French experience," Economics Working Papers 818, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    13. Jorge González-Chapela, 2007. "On the Price of Recreation Goods as a Determinant of Male Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(4), pages 795-824.
    14. Philip Trostel & Ian Walker, 2006. "Education and Work," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 377-399.
    15. Rotemberg, Julio J & Woodford, Michael, 1996. "Imperfect Competition and the Effects of Energy Price Increases on Economic Activity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(4), pages 550-577, November.
    16. Thomas, Carlos, 2008. "Search and matching frictions and optimal monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 936-956, July.
    17. Antonella Trigari, 2004. "Labour Market Search, Wage Bargaining and Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 268, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    18. Koray Aktas, 2021. "Characterizing Life-Cycle Dynamics of Annual Days of Work, Wages, and Cross-Covariances," Working Papers 465, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics.
    19. Ali Dib & Louis Phaneuf, 2005. "Intertemporal Substitution in Macroeconomics: Evidence from a Two-Dimensional Labour Supply Model with Money," Staff Working Papers 05-30, Bank of Canada.
    20. Kevin Huang, 2006. "Specific factors meet intermediate inputs: implications for the persistence problem," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(3), pages 483-507, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedhwp:wp-03-16. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    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.