Americans overestimate the intergenerational persistence in income ranks

Significance Intergenerational mobility indicates the openness within a society. The question of how Americans think about socioeconomic mobility prospects is drawing growing attention from scholars and policy makers. Our study proposes a survey instrument that connects the empirical literature on patterns of mobility with the literature on the public perceptions of mobility. With large-scale, population-representative data, we show that Americans overestimate the intergenerational persistence in income ranks. That is, they tend to see greater inequality of economic prospects between children from rich and poor families. These results highlight the need for policy and political solutions that seriously engage with Americans’ concerns about the equality of opportunity in the society.