IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21053.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Do We Know So Far about Multigenerational Mobility?

Author

Listed:
  • Gary Solon

Abstract

“Multigenerational mobility” refers to the associations in socioeconomic status across three or more generations. This article begins by summarizing the longstanding but recently growing empirical literature on multigenerational mobility. It then discusses multiple theoretical interpretations of the empirical patterns, including the one recently proposed in Gregory Clark’s book The Son Also Rises.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary Solon, 2015. "What Do We Know So Far about Multigenerational Mobility?," NBER Working Papers 21053, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21053
    Note: CH DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21053.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Card & John DiNardo & Eugena Estes, 2000. "The More Things Change: Immigrants and the Children of Immigrants in the 1940s, the 1970s, and the 1990s," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in the Economics of Immigration, pages 227-270, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Hertz, Tom, 2008. "A group-specific measure of intergenerational persistence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 415-417, September.
    3. Maia Güell & José V. Rodríguez Mora & Christopher I. Telmer, 2015. "The Informational Content of Surnames, the Evolution of Intergenerational Mobility, and Assortative Mating," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 693-735.
    4. George J. Borjas, 2021. "Ethnic Capital And Intergenerational Mobility," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics, chapter 6, pages 107-134, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Darren Lubotsky & Martin Wittenberg, 2006. "Interpretation of Regressions with Multiple Proxies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(3), pages 549-562, August.
    6. Mikael Lindahl & Mårten Palme & Sofia Sandgren Massih & Anna Sjögren, 2015. "Long-Term Intergenerational Persistence of Human Capital: An Empirical Analysis of Four Generations," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(1), pages 1-33.
    7. 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.
    8. Mary Corcoran & Roger Gordon & Deborah Laren & Gary Solon, 1992. "The Association between Men's Economic Status and Their Family and Community Origins," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(4), pages 575-601.
    9. Corak,Miles (ed.), 2004. "Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521827607.
    10. Gary S. Becker & Nigel Tomes, 1994. "Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Gregory Clark, 2015. "The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10181-2.
    12. Florencia Torche & Alejandro Corvalan, 2018. "Estimating Intergenerational Mobility With Grouped Data," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 47(4), pages 787-811, November.
    13. Robert Lucas & Sari Kerr, 2013. "Intergenerational income immobility in Finland: contrasting roles for parental earnings and family income," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 1057-1094, July.
    14. Gary S. Becker, 1981. "A Treatise on the Family," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck81-1.
    15. Behrman, Jere & Tarbman, Paul, 1985. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the United States: Some Estimates and a Test of Becker's Intergenerational Endowments Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 144-151, February.
    16. Gregory Clark & Neil Cummins, 2015. "Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in England, 1858–2012: Surnames and Social Mobility," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(582), pages 61-85, February.
    17. Peters, H Elizabeth, 1992. "Patterns of Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Earnings," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(3), pages 456-466, August.
    18. Borjas, George J, 1993. "The Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(1), pages 113-135, January.
    19. Daniel Aaronson & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2008. "Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the United States, 1940 to 2000," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(1).
    20. Robert Hodge, 1966. "Occupational mobility as a probability process," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 3(1), pages 19-34, March.
    21. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    22. Becker, Gary S & Tomes, Nigel, 1979. "An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(6), pages 1153-1189, December.
    23. Robert Mare, 2011. "A Multigenerational View of Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(1), pages 1-23, February.
    24. Zhen Zeng & Yu Xie, 2014. "The Effects of Grandparents on Children’s Schooling: Evidence From Rural China," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(2), pages 599-617, April.
    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. Colagrossi, Marco & d’Hombres, Béatrice & Schnepf, Sylke V, 2020. "Like (grand)parent, like child? Multigenerational mobility across the EU," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    2. Adrian Adermon & Mikael Lindahl & Mårten Palme, 2021. "Dynastic Human Capital, Inequality, and Intergenerational Mobility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(5), pages 1523-1548, May.
    3. Anna Christina D'Addio, 2007. "Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage: Mobility or Immobility Across Generations?," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 52, OECD Publishing.
    4. Giovanni Razzu & Ayago Wambile, 2020. "Three-generation educational mobility in six African countries," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-23, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    5. Wei Zou & Ruiqi Ma, 2024. "An Extended Family Perspective on Intergenerational Human Capital Transmission in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 1101-1139, September.
    6. Kroeger, Sarah & Thompson, Owen, 2016. "Educational mobility across three generations of American women," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 72-86.
    7. Shiue, Carol, 2019. "Social Mobility in the Long Run: A Temporal Analysis of China from 1300 to 1900," CEPR Discussion Papers 13589, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Braun, Sebastian Till & Stuhler, Jan, 2018. "The Transmission of Inequality Across Multiple Generations: Testing Recent Theories with Evidence from Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 128(609), pages 576-611.
    9. Ian Lundberg, 2020. "Does Opportunity Skip Generations? Reassessing Evidence From Sibling and Cousin Correlations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(4), pages 1193-1213, August.
    10. Jørgen Modalsli & Kelly Vosters, 2024. "Spillover Bias in Multigenerational Income Regressions," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 59(3), pages 743-776.
    11. Neidhöfer, Guido & Serrano, Joaquín & Gasparini, Leonardo, 2018. "Educational inequality and intergenerational mobility in Latin America: A new database," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 329-349.
    12. Orhan Torul & Oguz Oztunali, 2017. "Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Europe," Working Papers 2017/03, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    13. Jonathan Davis & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2017. "The Decline in Intergenerational Mobility After 1980," Working Paper Series WP-2017-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 14 Jan 2022.
    14. Güell, Maia & Rodríguez Mora, José V & Solon, Gary, 2018. "New Directions in Measuring Intergenerational Mobility," CEPR Discussion Papers 12959, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Guglielmo Barone & Sauro Mocetti, 2021. "Intergenerational Mobility in the Very Long Run: Florence 1427–2011 [Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the United States, 1940 to 2000]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(4), pages 1863-1891.
    16. Pablo Celhay & Sebasti�n Gallegos, 2015. "Persistence in the Transmission of Education: Evidence across Three Generations for Chile," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 420-451, August.
    17. Celhay, Pablo A. & Gallegos, Sebastian, 2023. "Educational Mobility Across Three Generations in Latin American Countries," Research Department working papers 1906, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica.
    18. Chong Lu, 2022. "The effect of migration on rural residents’ intergenerational subjective social status mobility in China," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3279-3308, October.
    19. Olivetti, Claudia & Paserman, M. Daniele & Salisbury, Laura, 2018. "Three-generation mobility in the United States, 1850–1940: The role of maternal and paternal grandparents," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 73-90.
    20. Guido Neidhöfer, 2019. "Intergenerational mobility and the rise and fall of inequality: Lessons from Latin America," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(4), pages 499-520, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    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:nbr:nberwo:21053. 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.