@article{737d9016948748fd8910652dc6deb26c,
title = "Long-term decline in intergenerational mobility in the United States since the 1850s",
abstract = "We make use of newly available data that include roughly 5 million linked household and population records from 1850 to 2015 to document long-term trends in intergenerational social mobility in the United States. Intergenerational mobility declined substantially over the past 150 y, but more slowly than previously thought. Intergenerational occupational rank–rank correlations increased from less than 0.17 to as high as 0.32, but most of this change occurred to Americans born before 1900. After controlling for the relatively high mobility of persons from farm origins, we find that intergenerational social mobility has been remarkably stable. In contrast with relative stability in rank-based measures of mobility, absolute mobility for the nonfarm population—the fraction of offspring whose occupational ranks are higher than those of their parents—increased for birth cohorts born prior to 1900 and has fallen for those born after 1940.",
keywords = "Inequality, Intergenerational mobility, Occupation, US Census, US history",
author = "Xi Song and Massey, {Catherine G.} and Rolf, {Karen A.} and Ferrie, {Joseph P.} and Rothbaum, {Jonathan L.} and Yu Xie",
note = "Funding Information: Any views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the US Census Bureau. This work was conducted under Census Bureau Data Management System Project 967 and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Project 1580. Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the 2017 RC28 Conference in Cologne, Germany; the 2017 Population Association of America conference in Chicago, IL; the workshop on Comparative Intergenerational Social Mobility at Princeton University; the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University; the Intergenerational Mobility and Income Inequality workshop at the University of Haifa; the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania; the Center on Population Dynamics at McGill University; and the Population Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University. We thank Hao Dong for help on the HRS restricted data application and analysis; and our research interns, Kai Feng, Yuqing Hu, Di Tong, Chuqiao Yuan, Xiaohang Zhao, and Xia Zheng, for outstanding research assistance. We thank Jennie Brand, Cameron Campbell, Marcy Carlson, Siwei Cheng, Thomas DiPrete, Felix Elwert, Eric Grodsky, Tod Hamilton, Robert Hauser, Joseph Hotz, Michael Hout, Hiroshi Ishida, Douglas Massey, Ellis Monk, Pamela Oliver, Fabian Pfeffer, James Raymo, Elizabeth Roberto, Christine Schwartz, Timothy Smeeding, Donald Treiman, Wout Ultee, Kim Weeden, Meir Yaish, Xiang Zhou, and numerous seminar participants for helpful comments and discussions. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.",
year = "2020",
month = jan,
day = "7",
doi = "10.1073/pnas.1905094116",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "117",
pages = "251--258",
journal = "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America",
issn = "0027-8424",
publisher = "National Academy of Sciences",
number = "1",
}