Full Citation
Title: The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2017
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ISSN:
DOI: 10.1126/science.aal4617
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Abstract: We estimated rates of “absolute income mobility”-the fraction of children who earn more than their parents-by combining data from U.S. Census and Current Population Survey cross sections with panel data from de-identified tax records. We found that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Increasing GDP growth rates alone cannot restore absolute mobility to the rates experienced by children born in the 1940s. However, distributing current GDP growth more equally across income groups as in the 1940 birth cohort would reverse more than 70% of the decline in mobility. These results imply that reviving the “American dream” of high rates of absolute mobility would require economic growth that is shared more broadly across the income distribution.
Url: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/04/21/science.aal4617.full
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Authors: Chetty, Raj; Grusky, David; Hell, Maximilian; Hendren, Nathaniel; Manduca, Robert; Narang, Jimmy
Periodical (Full): Science
Issue: 6336
Volume: 356
Pages: 398-406
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Family and Marriage, Poverty and Welfare
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