Reassessing Intergenerational Mobility in Germany and the United States: The Impact of Differences in Lifecycle Earnings Patterns
Using longitudinal data on fathers and their children, this study compares the extent of intergenerational mobility in Germany and the United States and introduces an estimation strategy that corrects estimates of intergenerational earnings elasticities for a possible lifecycle bias. In contrast to previous studies, we find that the extent of intergenerational mobility is more limited in the US than in Germany. Furthermore, while the errors-in-variables problems have been dealt with extensively in the literature, the inconsistencies in standard mobility measures due to lifecycle effects have attracted much less attention. The present paper proposes an estimation method that corrects for such inconsistencies. The extent of this lifecycle bias is found to be strong in Germany but only modest in the US.
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| Length: | 34 pages |
| Date of creation: | Sep 2006 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2006-055 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Spandauer Str. 1,10178 Berlin Phone: +49-30-2093-5708 Fax: +49-30-2093-5617 Web page: http://sfb649.wiwi.hu-berlin.de Email: More information through EDIRC
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