We use the Michigan Panel Data Study on Income Dynamics to decompose the well-known rise in cross-sectional variance of individual male earnings in the U.S. into permanent and transitory components. We find that about half of the increase has arisen from an increase in the variance of permanent component of earnings and half from an increase in the variance of the transitory component over the period 1969-1991. In contrast to previous work by the authors, we employ a formal model for earnings dynamics. we also show that our results are robust to alternative models for earnings dynamics used in past studies in the literature. Finally, we draw out the implications of our analysis for the study of earnings mobility and show that the findings obtained in recent studies of trends in mobility are contained in our earnings dynamics model.
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Length: 52 pages Date of creation: 01 Jul 1995 Date of revision:
01 Nov 1998 Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:444
Note: This paper has also been titled "Trends in the Covariance Structure of Earnings in the U.S.: 1969-1987" Contact details of provider: Postal: Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA Phone: 617-552-3670 Fax: +1-617-552-2308 Email: Web page: http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC/ More information through EDIRC
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