American geography of opportunity reveals European origins

Thor Berger and Per Engzell

No bm8c9, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: A large literature documents how intergenerational mobility—the degree to which (dis)advantage is passed on from parents to children—varies across and within countries. Less is known about the origin or persistence of such differences. We show that U.S. areas populated by descendants to European immigrants have similar levels of income equality and mobility as the countries their forebears came from: highest in areas dominated by descendants to Scandinavian and German immigrants, lower in places with French or Italian heritage, and lower still in areas with British roots. Similar variation in mobility is found for the black population and when analyzing causal place effects, suggesting that mobility differences arise at the community level and extend beyond descendants of European immigrant groups. Our findings indicate that the geography of U.S. opportunity may have deeper historical roots than previously recognized.

Date: 2018-06-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5b1ffa89ba5d13000e08b1b9/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:bm8c9

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/bm8c9

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().