Patterns of Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Earnings

This paper characterizes the patterns of intergenerational mobility in the United States using data for matched parent/child pairs from the National Longitudinal Surveys. In general, what is found is far from the extremes of either perfect mobility or perfect immobility. Parents' log income explains only about 9 percent to 11 percent of the variation in children's log incomes. Earnings exhibit more mobility than does total income, and the difference is most striking for daughters. The paper also identifies the influence of family background characteristics on mobility. The addition of these background variables adds another 3 to 5 percent age points to the R2 in the intergenerational earnings and income regressions. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.