Will I be Rich? Absolute Intergenerational Family Income Mobility Among Canadian Women

I use longitudinal Canadian tax data directly linking the family incomes of adult daughters to the same‐age family incomes of their mothers observed decades earlier to explore differences in women's absolute income mobility at different ages, across various family compositions, and for different income concepts. I also examine non‐linearities in the absolute mobility profiles of women. I estimate that the overall absolute intergenerational family income mobility rate for Canadian women aged 40 years in 2019 was 64.7%. It was higher (70.7%) when family income was adjusted for the number of adults in the family. Absolute mobility rates are strongly associated with family status and composition. My analysis also highlights differences in individual income mobility rates for different intra‐family pairings. Finally, I present new evidence regarding the relative merits of the “copula & marginals” method discussed in recent studies and document a weak relationship between women's relative and absolute income mobility.