IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dew/wpaper/2023-01.html

One-shot Economic Mobility via Microsoft Excel

Author

Listed:
  • Humberto Barreto

    (School of Business and Leadership, DePauw University)

Abstract

This paper explains how to use a macro-enabled Excel workbook, Mobility.xlsm, to teach basic concepts about intergenerational mobility as a standalone, one-time class or assignment at the undergraduate level. The focus is on explaining the results from Chetty et al. (2014) which tracks the parent’s place in the income distribution and then their adult children’s income ranking. Simulation is used to explain the bottom-to-top transition probability and the transition matrix with strong visuals and concrete numbers. The workbook is entirely self-contained and has a series of questions to lead students through the material. This paper has suggested answers and further areas of study. Download the freely-available Excel workbook at tiny.cc/mobilityexcel.

Suggested Citation

  • Humberto Barreto, 2023. "One-shot Economic Mobility via Microsoft Excel," Working Papers 2023-01, DePauw University, School of Business and Leadership and Department of Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:dew:wpaper:2023-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://scholarship.depauw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=dew
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Maggie R Jones & Sonya R Porter, 2020. "Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective [“Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US Over Two Centuries,”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(2), pages 711-783.
    2. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Patrick Kline & Emmanuel Saez, 2014. "Where is the land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(4), pages 1553-1623.
    3. Barnes, William & Easton, Todd & Hanig, Ross Leupp, 2019. "Student preconceptions and reality: A survey exercise to teach wealth inequality," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 1-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items 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. Luís Clemente-Casinhas & Luís Filipe Martins & Alexandra Ferreira-Lopes, 2025. "Using Survey Data to Estimate Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Education in Portugal," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 51-106, January.
    2. Lihua Lei, 2024. "Causal Interpretation of Regressions With Ranks," Papers 2406.05548, arXiv.org.
    3. Alberto Alesina & Sebastian Hohmann & Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2021. "Intergenerational Mobility in Africa," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(1), pages 1-35, January.
    4. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2024. "The Incubator of Human Capital: The NBER and the Rise of the Human Capital Paradigm," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic History of American Inequality: New Evidence and Perspectives, pages 225-247, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Yoosoon Chang & Fabio Gomez-Rodriguez & Christian Matthes, 2023. "The Influence of Fiscal and Monetary Policies on the Shape of the Yield Curve," CAMA Working Papers 2023-65, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    6. Martina Viarengo & Ugo Panizza & Enrico Nano, 2021. "A Generation of Italian Economists," CID Working Papers 400, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    7. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Eduardo M. Medina-Cortina, 2019. "Skin Color and Social Mobility: Evidence From Mexico," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(1), pages 321-343, February.
    8. Leah Boustan & Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen & Ran Abramitzky & Elisa Jácome & Alan Manning & Santiago Pérez & Analysia Watley & Adrian Adermon & Jaime Arellano-Bover & Olof Åslund & Marie Connolly & Nat, 2025. "Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in 15 Destination Countries," NBER Working Papers 33558, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Erin Cottle Hunt & Frank N. Caliendo, 2023. "Social security and risk sharing: the role of economic mobility across generations," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(5), pages 1374-1407, October.
    10. Laura A. Harvey & Jochen O. Mierau & James Rockey, 2024. "Inequality in an Equal Society," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 86(4), pages 871-904, August.
    11. Montalvo-Clavijo, Cesar & Castillo-Chavez, Carlos & Perrings, Charles & Mubayi, Anuj, 2023. "Neighborhood effects, college education, and social mobility," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    12. Veronika V. Eberharter, 2018. "Capability Deprivation, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Social Disadvantages—Empirical Evidence from Selected Countries," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(12), pages 1-22, December.
    13. Patricia Funjika & Rachel M. Gisselquist, 2020. "Social mobility and inequality between groups," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-12, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Atheendar S Venkataramani & Rourke O’Brien & Gregory L Whitehorn & Alexander C Tsai, 2020. "Economic influences on population health in the United States: Toward policymaking driven by data and evidence," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(9), pages 1-17, September.
    15. Ariel J. Binder & Caroline Walker & Jonathan Eggleston & Marta Murray-Close, 2022. "Race and Mobility in U.S. Marriage Markets: Quantifying the Role of Segregation," Working Papers 22-59, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. De Giorgi, Giacomo & Gambetti, Luca & Naguib, Costanza, 2020. "Life-Cycle Inequality: Blacks And Whites Differentials In Life Expectancy, Savings, Income, And Consumption," CEPR Discussion Papers 15182, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. García-Peñalosa, Cecilia & Petit, Fabien & van Ypersele, Tanguy, 2023. "Can workers still climb the social ladder as middling jobs become scarce? Evidence from two British cohorts," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    18. Kevin L. McKinney & John M. Abowd & Hubert P. Janicki, 2022. "U.S. long‐term earnings outcomes by sex, race, ethnicity, and place of birth," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(4), pages 1879-1945, November.
    19. Tiffany S. Neman, 2020. "Does Your Neighborhood’s Income Distribution Matter? A Multi-scale Study of Financial Well-Being in the U.S," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 951-970, December.
    20. Kelsey Carlston & Yehua Dennis Wei, 2024. "Urban Sprawl and Intergenerational Mobility: City- and Neighborhood-Level Effects of Sprawl," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 38(4), pages 235-248, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General
    • A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    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:dew:wpaper:2023-01. 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: Humberto Barreto (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emdepus.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.