Intergenerational persistence in income and social class: The impact of increased inequality

Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg, Lindsey Macmillan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

65 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Family income is found to be more closely related to sons' earnings for a cohort born in 1970 compared with a cohort born in 1958. This result is in stark contrast with the finding on the basis of social class; intergenerational mobility for this outcome is found to be unchanged. Our aim here is to explore the reason for this divergence. We derive a formal framework which relates mobility as measured by family income or earnings to mobility as measured by social class. Building on this framework we then test several alternative hypotheses to explain the difference between the trends. We find evidence of an increase in the intergenerational persistence of the permanent component of income that is unrelated to social class. We reject the hypothesis that the observed decline in income mobility is a consequence of the poor measurement of permanent family income in the 1958 cohort.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)541-563
Number of pages23
JournalJournal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A - Statistics in Society
Volume176
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2013

Keywords

  • Poverty, work and justice

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