American exceptionalism in a new light : a comparison of intergenerational earnings mobility in the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the United States
Jäntti, Markus, Bratsberg, Bernt, Røed, Knut, Raaum, Oddbjørn, Naylor, Robin Andrew, 1959-, Österbacka, Eva, Björklund, Anders and Eriksson, Tor (2005) American exceptionalism in a new light : a comparison of intergenerational earnings mobility in the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. Working Paper. University of Warwick, Department of Economics, Coventry. Official URL: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/papers/2007_publications/twerp_781.pdf AbstractWe develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyse differences in intergenerational
earnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland,
Norway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as well
as fathers and daughters using both mobility matrices and regression and correlation coefficients.
Our results suggest that all countries exhibit substantial earnings persistence across
generations, but with statistically significant differences across countries. Mobility is lower in
the U.S. than in the U.K., where it is lower again compared to the Nordic countries. Persistence
is greatest in the tails of the distributions and tends to be particularly high in the upper
tails: though in the U.S. this is reversed with a particularly high likelihood that sons of the
poorest fathers will remain in the lowest earnings quintile. This is a challenge to the popular
notion of ’American exceptionalism’. The U.S. also differs from the Nordic countries in
its very low likelihood that sons of the highest earners will show downward ’long-distance’
mobility into the lowest earnings quintile. In this, the U.K. is more similar to the U.S. | Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) |
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Intergenerational relations, Occupational mobility, Wages |
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| Series Name: | Warwick economic research papers |
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| Publisher: | University of Warwick, Department of Economics |
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| Place of Publication: | Coventry |
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| Date: | December 2005 |
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| Number: | No.781 |
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| Number of Pages: | 44 |
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| Status: | Not Peer Reviewed |
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| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access |
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| Funder: | Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM), Yrjö Jahnssonin säätiö [Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation], Suomen Akatemia [Academy of Finland], Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research |
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| Grant number: | no. 149813-599 (NCM), project no. 206680 (AF) |
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