The Great Gatsby Curve: Upward Mobility, Persistence and Inequality

Garance Genicot, Debraj Ray and Laura Mayoral

No 1510, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: This paper revisits the Great Gatsby curve that connects inequality to mobility, using panel data spanning several countries and time periods. Existing literature observes that the intergenerational elasticity of earnings falls as inequality rises, implying that mobility (viewed as the negative of that elasticity) is negatively correlated with inequality. In sharp contrast, we show that measures of upward mobility, axiomatically aligned with progressivity in income growth rates, are robustly and positively associated with baseline inequality. While there is no contradiction here, our study highlights crucial differences between mobility measures based on (lower) persistence and those based on growth progressivity, and asks the reader to align their choice of measure with foundational criteria that they feel best describe "mobility". Our findings offer a re-interpretation of the Gatsby curve through the lens of shared prosperity, and have implications for the evolution of inequality within countries.

Keywords: inequality traps; persistence; pro-poor growth; upward mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I32 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/1510.pdf (application/pdf)

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:bge:wpaper:1510

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bruno Guallar ().