Family characteristics and macroeconomic factors in U. S. intragenerational family income mobility, 1978–2014

Katharine Bradbury

No 19-1, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: Family economic mobility has been a policy concern for decades, with interest heating up further since the 1990s. Using data that tracks individual families? incomes during overlapping 10-year periods from 1978 through 2014, this paper investigates the relationships of factors ? family characteristics and macro influences ? to intragenerational mobility and whether the importance of those factors has changed over time. Family characteristics include both levels of work behavior and family structure and within-period changes in those factors, as well as time-invariant characteristics of the family head, such as race. Macro factors include indicators of GDP growth and inflation during each 10-year period. The positions families occupy in the income distribution and the degree to which they are stuck or able to move up (or slide down) over time are critical determinants of their current well-being and their children?s prospects.

Keywords: intragenerational mobility; economic inequality; family income distribution; macroeconomic influences; family structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 E24 I32 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2018-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mac
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