Earnings mobility and instability, 1969-1995

Mary Daly and Greg Duncan ()

No 97-06, Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Abstract: We study earnings mobility and instability using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our main contribution is to update mobility and instability calculations to include data from the 1990s, although we also provide a number of tests of robustness across mobility and instability indicators and sample definition. All in all, we find few trends in earnings instability since the 1970s, particularly among younger workers. However, we find no evidence that instability continued to increase throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. With regard to mobility, we find greater upward mobility and less downward mobility of middle-income workers in the 1980s relative to the 1970s. The former trend appears to have reversed itself by the middle of the 1990s. Employment-based indicators are consistent with earnings-based indicators in showing increased employment instability between the 1970s and later periods.

Keywords: Wages; Labor mobility; Income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/wp97-06.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:fip:fedfap:97-06

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().