Full Citation

Title: Rank-Correlations Are Not Robust to Differences in Group Inequality

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2023

ISBN:

ISSN: 1573-8701

DOI: 10.1007/S10888-022-09550-W/METRICS

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Rank-based measures of intergenerational mobility are generally justified by their invariance to changes in inequality. However, I show that whenever the source of inequality is uncorrelated to parent ranks, such as in the cases of gender and birth order, increasing equality leads to a fall in rank mobility as measured by the rank correlation. I develop a method to ex-post quantify the importance of inequality for mobility measurement using cross-sectional income distributions and show that US income mobility could have fallen by as much as 24 percent since 1970 due to increased gender equality. Without specifying a policy objective of interest, it is therefore unclear which conclusions to draw from differences in rank-correlations across societies or from changes over time.

Url: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10888-022-09550-w

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Authors: Gandil, Mikkel Høst

Periodical (Full): Journal of Economic Inequality

Issue:

Volume: 21

Pages: 201-217

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Gender, Population Mobility and Spatial Demography, Poverty and Welfare

Countries: