Intergenerational Mobility: Racial Disparities in Mobility from a Holistic Perspective

• In Event: 30202 - Mobility

Abstract

Domain-specific intergenerational elasticities of parent and child attainment, such as those capturing the relationship between parent’s education and child’s education, have been the ruling practice for studies of mobility since Blau and Duncan (1967). This practice has yielded very different conclusions about the extent of intergenerational persistence in the United States, with estimates ranging from .64 for neighborhood mobility to as low as .32 for occupation. We utilize the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to develop latent variables we term “origin profile” and “destination profile” based on five indicators: occupation, income, education, wealth, and neighborhood socioeconomic status. We find that Black White disparities in mobility between origin and destination profiles are quite profound.

Authors

• Janeria Alexis Easley, Emory University

• Regina S. Baker, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Emily Dore, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health