Intergenerational Mobility and the Informative Content of SurnamesMaia Güell (), Sevi Rodríguez Mora () and Chris Telmer CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE Abstract: We propose an alternative method for measuring intergenerational mobility. Traditional methods based on panel data provide measurements that are scarce, difficult to compare across countries and almost impossible to get across time. In particular this means that we do not know how intergenerational mobility is correlated with growth, income or the degree of inequality. Our proposal is to measure the informative content of surnames inone census. The more information does the surname have on the income of an individual, the more important is background in determining outcomes; and thus, the less mobility there is. The reason for this is that surnamesinform on family relationships because the distribution of surnames is necessarily much skewed. A large percentage of the population is bound to have a very unfrequent surname. For them the partition generated bysurnames is very informative on family linkages. First, we develop a model whose endogenous variable is the joint distribution of surnames and income. Then we explore the relationship between mobility and the informative content of surnames. We allow for assortative mating to be a determinant of both. Then, we use our methodology to show that in a large Spanish region the informative content of surnames is large and consistent with the model. We also show that it has increased over time, indicating a substantial drop in the degree ofmobility. Finally, using the peculiarities of the Spanish surname convention we show that the degree of assortative mating has also increased over time, in such a manner that might explain the decrease in mobilityobserved. Our method allows us to provide measures of mobility comparable across time. It should also allow us to study other issues related to inheritance. Keywords: inheritance; birth-death processes; cross-sectional data; population genetics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0810 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
Swedish Business School at Örebro University.