IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/elsaab/177-en.html

More unequal, but more mobile?: Earnings inequality and mobility in OECD countries

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Garnero

    (OECD)

  • Alexander Hijzen

    (OECD)

  • Sébastien Martin

    (OECD)

Abstract

This paper provides comprehensive cross-country evidence on the relationship between earnings inequality and intra-generational mobility by simulating individual earnings and employment trajectories in the long-term using short panel data for 24 OECD countries. On average across countries, about 25% of earnings inequality in a given year evens out over the life cycle as a result of mobility. Moreover, mobility is not systematically higher in countries with more earnings inequality in general. However, a positive and statistically significant relationship is found only in the bottom of the distribution. This reflects the role of mobility between employment and unemployment and not that of mobility up and down the earnings ladder. Ce document fournit une analyse approfondie de la relation entre l’inégalité des revenus d’activité et la mobilité intra-générationnelle en simulant les trajectoires professionnelles à l’aide de données de panel sur une courte période pour 24 pays de l’OCDE. En moyenne et pour l’ensemble des pays, environ 25% de l'inégalité des revenus observée une année donnée s’égalise au cours du cycle de vie du fait de la mobilité. De plus, la mobilité n’est pas systématiquement plus élevée dans les pays généralement plus inégalitaires en termes de revenus. Toutefois, on observe une relation positive et statistiquement significative entre inégalité et mobilité dans la partie inférieure de la distribution. Cela reflète le rôle de la mobilité entre emploi et chômage, et non celui de la mobilité ascendante et descendante sur l'échelle des salaires.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Garnero & Alexander Hijzen & Sébastien Martin, 2016. "More unequal, but more mobile?: Earnings inequality and mobility in OECD countries," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 177, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:elsaab:177-en
    DOI: 10.1787/5jm3p5m7ccr2-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. More Unequal, But More Mobile? Earnings Inequality and Mobility in OECD Countries
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2016-04-07 18:38:50

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lucas Chancel, 2019. "Ten facts about income inequality in advanced economies," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876982, HAL.
    2. Pullman, Ashley & Gauly, Britta & Lechner, Clemens M., 2021. "Short-term earnings mobility in the Canadian and German context: the role of cognitive skills," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 55(55), pages 1-.10.
    3. Chiara Criscuolo & Alexander Hijzen & Cyrille Schwellnus & Erling Barth & Wen-Hao Chen & Richard Fabling & Priscilla Fialho & Balazs Stadler & Richard Upward & Wouter Zwysen & Katarzyna Grabska-Romago, 2020. "Workforce composition, productivity and pay: the role of firms in wage inequality," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1603, OECD Publishing.
    4. Monica BURESCU MIHĂILA & Paula Roxana CUCOȘ, 2023. "Implications of migration policies on reducing income inequalities and poverty in Europe," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(2(635), S), pages 23-42, Summer.
    5. Yang, Xiaoliang & Zhou, Peng, 2022. "Wealth inequality and social mobility: A simulation-based modelling approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 307-329.
    6. repec:iab:iabjlr:v:55:i::p:art.10 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Frédéric Teulon & Guillaume Bigot & Bernard Terrany & Negar Youssefian, 2016. "Rémunérations des PDG : toniques ou toxiques ? Une mise en perspective de la littérature," Post-Print hal-01865108, HAL.
    8. Peter Haan & Daniel Kemptner & Victoria Prowse & Maximilian Schaller, 2025. "Insurance, redistribution, and the inequality of lifetime income," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(2), pages 565-613, May.
    9. Dean R. Lillard, 2021. "Cross‐National Research: Realised and Potential Contributions," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 54(4), pages 542-553, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Nan Gao, 2025. "Educational constraints on marital sorting and income mobility," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(2), pages 1-23, February.
    12. Martinez, Isabel Z., 2017. "Die Topeinkommen in der Schweiz seit 1980: Verteilung und Mobilität [Top incomes in Switzerland since 1980: Distribution and Mobility]," MPRA Paper 84330, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Ashley Pullman & Britta Gauly & Clemens M. Lechner, 2021. "Short-term earnings mobility in the Canadian and German context: the role of cognitive skills," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 55(1), pages 1-19, December.
    14. Birgitta Jansson, 2021. "Income inequality and intragenerational income mobility in Sweden from 1983 to 2010: Following two birth cohorts," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 751-773, December.
    15. Pullman, Ashley & Gauly, Britta & Lechner, Clemens M., 2021. "Short-term earnings mobility in the Canadian and German context: the role of cognitive skills," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 55, pages 1-10.
    16. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries

    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:oec:elsaab:177-en. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/eloecfr.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.