IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/16-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Levels and trends in the income mobility of U.S. families, 1977−2012

Author

Listed:
  • Katharine L. Bradbury

Abstract

Much of America?s promise is predicated on economic mobility?the possibility that people can move up and down the economic ladder during their lifetimes. Mobility is of particular consequence when economic disparities are increasing. Using panel data and mobility concepts and measures adapted from the literature, this paper examines 10-year income mobility levels and trends for U.S. working-age families during the time span 1977?2012. According to many measures, mobility, already limited in the 1978?1988 decade, declined over ensuing decades: families? later-year incomes increasingly depended on their starting place, and the distribution of longer-term family incomes became less equal.

Suggested Citation

  • Katharine L. Bradbury, 2016. "Levels and trends in the income mobility of U.S. families, 1977−2012," Working Papers 16-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:16-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2016/levels-and-trends-in-the-income-mobility-of-us-families-1977-2012.aspx
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/briefs/wp1608.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. repec:bla:econom:v:71:y:2004:i:281:p:223-239 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Auten, Gerald & Gee, Geoffrey, 2009. "Income Mobility in the United States: New Evidence From Income Tax Data," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(2), pages 301-328, June.
    4. Timm Bönke & Giacomo Corneo & Holger Lüthen, 2015. "Lifetime Earnings Inequality in Germany," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 171-208.
    5. Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2009. "Using The P90/P10 Index To Measure U.S. Inequality Trends With Current Population Survey Data: A View From Inside The Census Bureau Vaults," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(1), pages 166-185, March.
    6. Lynn Karoly & Gary Burtless, 1995. "Demographic change, rising earnings inequality, and the distribution of personal well-being, 1959–1989," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 32(3), pages 379-405, August.
    7. Richard V. Burkhauser & Timothy M. Smeeding & Joachim Merz, 1996. "Relative Inequality And Poverty In Germany And The United States Using Alternative Equivalence Scales," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 42(4), pages 381-400, December.
    8. Katharine L. Bradbury & Jane Katz, 2002. "Issues in economics: are lifetime incomes growing more unequal?: looking at new evidence on family income mobility," Regional Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 12(Q 4), pages 2-5.
    9. Robert Carroll & David Joulfaian & Mark Rider, 2006. "Income Mobility: The Recent American Experience," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0620, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    10. Wojciech Kopczuk & Emmanuel Saez & Jae Song, 2010. "Earnings Inequality and Mobility in the United States: Evidence from Social Security Data Since 1937," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 91-128.
    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. Brett Mullins & David L. Sjoquist & Sally Wallace, 2021. "Earnings mobility and the Great Recession," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2718-2732, November.

    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. 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.
    2. Katharine L. Bradbury, 2011. "Trends in U. S. family income mobility, 1969-2006," Working Papers 11-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    3. van Treeck, Till. & Sturn, Simon., 2012. "Income inequality as a cause of the Great Recession? : A survey of current debates," ILO Working Papers 994709343402676, International Labour Organization.
    4. Richard V. Burkhauser & Takashi Oshio & Ludmila Rovba, 2008. "How the Distribution of After-Tax Income Changed Over the 1990s Business Cycle: A Comparison of the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Japan," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 17(1), pages 87-109, March.
    5. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    6. Riphahn, Regina T. & Schnitzlein, Daniel D., 2016. "Wage mobility in East and West Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 11-34.
    7. David Splinter, 2022. "Income Mobility and Inequality: Adult‐Level Measures From the Us Tax Data Since 1979," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(4), pages 906-921, December.
    8. Aart Kraay & Roy Weide, 2022. "Measuring intragenerational mobility using aggregate data," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 273-314, June.
    9. Yonatan Berman, 2022. "Absolute intragenerational mobility in the United States, 1962–2014," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 587-609, September.
    10. Till van Treeck, 2012. "Did inequality cause the U.S. financial crisis?," IMK Working Paper 91-2012, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    11. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    12. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Larrimore, Jeff & Simon, Kosali I., 2012. "A "Second Opinion" on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(1), pages 7-32, March.
    13. Nicolas Hérault & Dean Hyslop & Stephen P. Jenkins & Roger Wilkins, 2024. "Rising top‐income persistence in Australia: Evidence from income tax data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 70(1), pages 154-186, March.
    14. Moritz Kuhn & Moritz Schularick & Ulrike I. Steins, 2020. "Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949–2016," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3469-3519.
    15. Muthitacharoen, Athiphat & Burong, Trongwut, 2023. "Climbing the economic ladder: Earnings inequality and intragenerational mobility among Thai formal workers," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    16. Zeng, Ting & Zhu, Shenghao, 2022. "The mobility of top earnings, income, and wealth in China: Facts from the 2011–2017 China household finance survey," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    17. Louis Chauvel & Martin Schr der, 2015. "Inequality between birth cohorts of the 20th century in West Germany, France and the US," LIS Working papers 628, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    18. 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.
    19. Richard Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen Jenkins & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Estimating trends in US income inequality using the Current Population Survey: the importance of controlling for censoring," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 393-415, September.
    20. Giesecke, Matthias & Bönke, Timm & Lüthen, Holger, 2011. "The Dynamics of Earnings in Germany: Evidence from Social Security Records," VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis 48692, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    income mobility; income inequality; income distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    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:fedbwp:16-8. 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: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.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.