Mothers, Schools, and the Making of American Human Capital Mobility

Lukas Althoff, Harriet Brookes Gray and Hugo A. Reichardt

No 1603, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: How did the US become a land of opportunity? Previous historical research on intergenerational mobility has focused on father-son income correlations, masking the role of mothers. We introduce a new mobility measure that incorporates both parents' human capital, develop a latent variable method leveraging literacy as a proxy, and construct a representative linked panel that includes women. We find that intergenerational mobility—in both human capital and income—rose sharply from the 19th to the 20th century. Initially, maternal human capital was most predictive of children's outcomes. However, as schooling expanded, this reliance declined and intergenerational mobility rose. Investments in mass education have therefore been central to America's rise as a mobile society.

Keywords: human capital; intergenerational mobility; latent variable methods; mass schooling; mothers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J16 J24 J62 N31 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
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