America’s Rise in Human Capital Mobility

Lukas Althoff, Harriet Brookes Gray and Hugo Reichardt

No 119, Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: How did the US become a land of opportunity? We show that the country’s pioneering role in mass education was key. Unlike previous research, which has focused on father-son income correlations, we incorporate both parents in a new measure of intergenerational mobility that considers multiple inputs, including mothers’ and fathers’ human capital. To estimate mobility despite limitations in historical data, we introduce a latent variable method and construct a representative linked panel that includes women. Our findings reveal that human capital mobility rose sharply from 1850 to 1950, driven by a declining reliance on maternal human capital, which had been most predictive of child outcomes before widespread schooling. Broadening schooling weakened this reliance on mothers, raising mobility in both human capital and income over time.

Keywords: Intergenerational mobility; Economic history; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J62 N31 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11-20
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers-institute/iwp119.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers-institute/iwp119.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://researchdatabase.minneapolisfed.org/downloads/sx61dm562)

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:fip:fedmoi:102153

DOI: 10.21034/iwp.119

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kate Hansel ().