IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/18618.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consolidating the Evidence on Income Mobility in the Western States of Germany and the U.S. from 1984-2006

Author

Listed:
  • Gulgun Bayaz-Ozturk
  • Richard V. Burkhauser
  • Kenneth A. Couch

Abstract

The cross-national intragenerational income mobility literature assumes within-country mobility is invariant over the period measured. We argue that a great social transformation--German reunification-- abruptly and permanently altered economic mobility. Using standard measures of mobility (with panel data for the western states of Germany and the U.S.) over the entire period 1984-2006, we find the conventional result that income mobility is greater in Germany. But when we cut the data into moving five-year windows and compare mobility before and after reunification, income mobility declines significantly over the years immediately following reunification in Germany but not in the U.S.

Suggested Citation

  • Gulgun Bayaz-Ozturk & Richard V. Burkhauser & Kenneth A. Couch, 2012. "Consolidating the Evidence on Income Mobility in the Western States of Germany and the U.S. from 1984-2006," NBER Working Papers 18618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18618
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18618.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2006. "Trends in income inequality, pro-poor income growth, and income mobility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 531-548, July.
    2. Bartels, Charlotte & Bönke, Timm, 2010. "German male income volatility 1984 to 2008," Discussion Papers 2010/18, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    3. Biewen Martin, 2005. "The Covariance Structure of East and West German Incomes and its Implications for the Persistence of Poverty and Inequality," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 6(4), pages 445-469, December.
    4. Luis Ayala & Mercedes Sastre, 2004. "Europe vs. the United States: is there a trade-off between mobility and inequality?," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 13(1-2), pages 4-4, March-Jun.
    5. Grabka, Markus M. & Schwarze, Johannes & Wagner, Gert G., 1999. "How unification and immigration affected the German income distribution," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 867-878, April.
    6. VAN KERM Philippe, 2003. "What Lies Behind Income Mobility? Reranking and Distributional Change in Belgium, Western Germany and the USA," IRISS Working Paper Series 2003-03, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    7. Wen‐Hao Chen, 2009. "Cross‐National Differences In Income Mobility: Evidence From Canada, The United States, Great Britain And Germany," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(1), pages 75-100, March.
    8. Esfandiar Maasoumi & Mark Trede, 2001. "Comparing Income Mobility In Germany And The United States Using Generalized Entropy Mobility Measures," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 551-559, August.
    9. Shorrocks, Anthony, 1978. "Income inequality and income mobility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 376-393, December.
    10. Peter Gottschalk & Robert Moffitt, 2009. "The Rising Instability of U.S. Earnings," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 3-24, Fall.
    11. Biewen, Martin, 2002. "Bootstrap inference for inequality, mobility and poverty measurement," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 317-342, June.
    12. Frick, Joachim R. & Jenkings, Stephen P. & Lillard, Dean R. & Lipps, Oliver & Wooden, Mark, 2007. "The Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) and Its Member Country Household Panel Studies," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 127(4), pages 627-654.
    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. Garnero, Andrea & Hijzen, Alexander & Martin, Sébastien, 2019. "More unequal, but more mobile? Earnings inequality and mobility in OECD countries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 26-35.
    2. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. Timothy M. Smeeding, 2018. "The PSID in Research and Policy," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 680(1), pages 29-47, November.
    4. Nicholas Rohde & Kam Ki Tang & D.S. Prasada Rao, 2014. "Distributional Characteristics of Income Insecurity in the U.S., Germany, and Britain," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(S1), pages 159-176, May.
    5. Olga Cantó & David O. Ruiz, 2015. "The Contribution of Income Mobility to Economic Insecurity in the US and Spain during the Great Recession," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Measurement of Poverty, Deprivation, and Economic Mobility, volume 23, pages 109-152, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    6. Zwysen, Wouter, 2014. "A disadvantaged childhood matters more if local unemployment is high," ISER Working Paper Series 2014-43, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    7. Zbigniew Mogila & Patricia C. Melo & José M. Gaspar, 2020. "Exploring the relation between income mobility and inequality at the regional level using EU-SILC microdata," Working Papers REM 2020/0134, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.

    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. Gulgun Bayaz-Ozturk & Richard V. Burkhauser & Kenneth A. Couch, 2014. "Consolidating The Evidence On Income Mobility In The Western States Of Germany And The United States From 1984 To 2006," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 431-443, January.
    2. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. Paul Allanson, 2008. "On the characterisation and measurement of the welfare effects of income mobility from an ex-ante perspective," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 219, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    4. Austin Nichols & Philipp Rehm, 2014. "Income Risk in 30 Countries," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(S1), pages 98-116, May.
    5. Louis Chauvel & Anne Hartung & Flaviana Palmisano, 2017. "Dynamics of Income Rank Volatility: Evidence from Germany and the US," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 926, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    6. Paul Allanson, 2012. "On the characterization and economic evaluation of income mobility as a process of distributional change," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(4), pages 505-528, December.
    7. Nicholas Rohde & Kam Ki Tang & D.S. Prasada Rao, 2014. "Distributional Characteristics of Income Insecurity in the U.S., Germany, and Britain," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(S1), pages 159-176, May.
    8. Hyungna Oh & Yun Jeong Choi, 2018. "Limited Income Mobility: Empirical Evidence from Korea," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(2), pages 665-687, July.
    9. Thomas Demuynck & Dirk Van de gaer, 2012. "Inequality Adjusted Income Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 79(316), pages 747-765, October.
    10. Riphahn, Regina T. & Schnitzlein, Daniel D., 2016. "Wage mobility in East and West Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 11-34.
    11. VAN KERM Philippe, 2006. "Comparisons of income mobility profiles," IRISS Working Paper Series 2006-03, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    12. Rolf Aaberge & Magne Mogstad, 2014. "Income mobility as an equalizer of permanent income," Discussion Papers 769, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    13. Coban, Mustafa, 2017. "Wage mobility, wage inequality, and tasks: Empirical evidence from Germany, 1984-2014," Discussion Paper Series 139, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Chair of Economic Order and Social Policy.
    14. Chauvel Louis & Hartung Anne & Palmisano Flaviana, 2019. "Dynamics of Individual Income Rank Volatility: Evidence from West Germany and the US," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-22, April.
    15. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2016. "Assessing Individual Income Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 679-703, October.
    16. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2006. "Trends in income inequality, pro-poor income growth, and income mobility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 531-548, July.
    17. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2011. "Has the Instability of Personal Incomes been Increasing?," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 218(1), pages 33-43, October.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09j008g6g0g is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Stéphane Bonhomme & Jean-Marc Robin, 2009. "Assessing the Equalizing Force of Mobility Using Short Panels: France, 1990-2000," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 76(1), pages 63-92.
    20. Aart Kraay & Roy Weide, 2022. "Measuring intragenerational mobility using aggregate data," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 273-314, June.
    21. Van Kerm, Philippe & P. Jenkins, Stephen, 2011. "Trends in individual income growth: measurement methods and British evidence," ISER Working Paper Series 2011-06, Institute for Social and Economic Research.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

    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:nbr:nberwo:18618. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.