A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility

Gary Becker, Scott Kominers, Kevin M. Murphy and Jörg Spenkuch

Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 126, issue S1, S7 - S25

Abstract: We study the link between market forces, cross-sectional inequality, and intergenerational mobility. Emphasizing complementarities in the production of human capital, we show that wealthy parents invest, on average, more in their offspring than poorer ones. As a result, economic status persists across generations even in a world with perfect capital markets and without differences in innate ability. In fact, under certain conditions, successive generations of the same family may cease to regress toward the mean. We also consider how short- and long-run mobility are affected by changes in the returns to human capital.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (69)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698759 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698759 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility (2015)
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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/698759

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().