Slow Motion:Earnings Mobility of Young Workers in the 1970s and 1980s

Greg Duncan (), Johanne Boisjoly and Timothy Smeeding

IPR working papers from Institute for Policy Resarch at Northwestern University

Abstract: This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate cohort changes in earnings trajectories. Among male workers turning 21 before 1980, we find that more than six in ten (60%) of all male workers and seven in ten (71%) of college-educated male workers attained earnings levels by age 30 that were at least twice the poverty line. These figures are considerably higher than the corresponding 42% and 56% fractions of workers turning 21 between 1968 and 1980. Relatively few members of the overlapping groups of blacks, men with less schooling, and men from low-SES family backgrounds succeeded in crossing the twice-poverty threshold. When compared with older cohorts, recent cohorts from all demographic subgroups we examined took longer to reach the three earnings thresholds used in our analysis.

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:nwuipr:95-18

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