Who Climbs the Income Ladder? Cross-Country Evidence on Income Mobility from Tax Record Data

Sebastian Königs () and Javier Terrero-Dávila
Additional contact information
Sebastian Königs: OECD
Javier Terrero-Dávila: OECD

No 17996, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Income shocks and limited upward mobility can undermine people’s well-being and economic prospects. Most cross-country studies on income mobility over people’s lives rely on survey data, but small samples limit detailed analysis by socio-demographic group or segment of the distribution. This paper presents first results of an OECD initiative collecting and harmonising administrative microdata to study income dynamics across countries. Applying rank-rank methods, it measures relative mobility in disposable incomes over five years for working-age people in Austria, Belgium, Canada and Estonia. The paper shows that: i) income persistence is strongest at the bottom and top of the distribution; ii) young people experience larger shifts in income ranks, though not always greater upward mobility; iii) women experience weaker upward mobility than men, particularly in the bottom half of the distribution; and iv) people with tertiary education move up the income ladder, at the expense of those with lower education.

Keywords: administrative microdata; income mobility; income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17996.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:iza:izadps:dp17996

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().