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Black-white differences in intergenerational economic mobility in the US

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  • Bhash Mazumder

Abstract

Traditional measures of intergenerational mobility such as the intergenerational elasticity are not useful for inferences concerning group differences in mobility with respect to the pooled income distribution. This paper uses transition probabilities and measures of “directional rank mobility” that can identify interracial differences in intergenerational mobility. The study uses two data sources, including one that contains social security earnings for a large intergenerational sample. I find that recent cohorts of blacks are not only significantly less upwardly mobile but also significantly more downwardly mobile than whites. This implies a steady-state distribution in which there is no racial convergence in income. A descriptive analysis using covariates reveals that test scores in adolescence can explain much of the racial difference in both upward and downward mobility. Family structure can account for some of the racial gap in upward mobility but not downward mobility. Completed schooling and parental wealth also appear to account for some of the racial gaps in intergenerational mobility.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in its series Working Paper Series with number WP-2011-10.

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Date of creation: 2011
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2011-10

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Keywords: Intergenerational relations ; African Americans - Economic conditions;

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  1. Bratsberg,Bernt & Røed, Knut & Raaum, Oddbjørn & Naylor, Robin & Jäntti, Markus & Eriksson, Tor & Österbacka, Eva, 2007. "Nonlinearities in Intergenerational Earnings Mobility : Consequences for Cross-Country Comparisons," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 782, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
  2. Hertz, Tom, 2008. "A group-specific measure of intergenerational persistence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 415-417, September.
  3. Neal, Derek A & Johnson, William R, 1996. "The Role of Premarket Factors in Black-White Wage Differences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 869-95, October.
  4. Elizabeth U. Cascio & Ethan G. Lewis, 2006. "Schooling and the Armed Forces Qualifying Test: Evidence from School-Entry Laws," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(2).
  5. Formby, John P. & Smith, W. James & Zheng, Buhong, 2004. "Mobility measurement, transition matrices and statistical inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 181-205, May.
  6. Daniel Aaronson & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2005. "Intergenerational economic mobility in the U.S., 1940 to 2000," Working Paper Series WP-05-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
  7. Chul-In Lee & Gary Solon, 2006. "Trends in Intergenerational Income Mobility," NBER Working Papers 12007, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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