Income Mobility

... Robeyns' own list was drawn from existing literature in the field of gender inequality and then debated with feminist scholars. ... services rarely meet spontaneous travel wishes, and most of those provided 'for older people' are oriented toward 'serious' travel needs” (Davey 2007: 62 ...

The Ghana cocoa market has been extensively liberalised over the period since the mid 1980s. Three issues have been prominent in microeconomic research on the effects of liberalisation on agriculture. The first has been the size of any supply response, the second has been the effect on producers of reduced subsidies on inputs, and the third whether innovation has occurred.

This paper develops an aggregate income mobility measure based on income transition matrices. The proposed measure satisfies certain desirable properties and captures different facets of mobility. It is additively decomposable into upward and downward mobility components which help us in understanding the nature of mobility. The proposed measure is also additively decomposable into income sub-group mobility components that enable us to see whether mobility among lower income groups is different from that among higher income groups. An empirical illustration with data for China and the United States is presented.

We analyse intergenerational persistence in income and education in Chile and Peru for birth cohorts of the early 1950s to 1990. Both countries have seen a structural expansion of education over this period and decreasing income inequality in recent decades. We impute non-observed parental income from repeated cross-sections and estimate persistence in the range of 0.63 to 0.67 in Peru and 0.66 to 0.76 in Chile for household heads of the birth cohorts 1977–90. The analysis of educational mobility covers household heads of birth cohorts from 1953 to 1990 and relies on retrospective information. We observe an increase in absolute mobility for younger generations, which we relate to the structural expansion of education that created room at the top. In relative terms, mobility patterns remain more stable – parental education is still a strong predictor of children’s educational achievement. The relationship is non-linear in both countries: persistence among very poorly and highly educated groups is strong, while individuals with parents of average education levels are more mobile. Upward mobility is stronger in Peru than in Chile: the chances to move from no formal education to higher education across one generation are 46% of the average in Peru compared to 20% in Chile. The chances of persisting in the top across generations are also slightly higher in Peru, with a factor of three times the average compared to 2.76 in Chile.

Abstract - The regressivity of the gasoline,tax and,other consumption taxes has been,challenged,on the grounds,that the use of annual as opposed,to lifetime income,and consumption,data leads to a substantial overestimate,of regressivity.Rather than rely on proxies for lifetime income, in this paper panel data on gasoline consumption,and,income,are used to measure,incidence,over an intermediate time period. When,people,are grouped into 11-year average income deciles, average,gasoline,tax burdens,are only slightly less regressive than annual burdens. The main,reason,for the similarity of annual and,intermediate- run burdens,is the limited degree,of income,mobility over an 11-year period.

... Page 3. IZA Discussion Paper No. ... Tito Boeri IGIER – Universit‡ Bocconi Via Salasco 5 20136 Milano Italy Email: tito.boeri@uni-bocconi.it ∗ We thank Tony Atkinson, Piero Cipollone, Tullio Jappelli, Marco Magnani, Giuseppe Parigi, Michele Pellizzari, Roberto Perotti, Pietro ...

This paper aims to present an assessment of the effects of panel attrition on income mobility comparisons for some EU-countries by using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). There are different possibilities of correcting the attrition problem by means of alternative longitudinal weighting schemes. The sensitivity of mobility estimates to these attrition correction procedures is tested in the paper. Our results show that ECHP attrition is characterised by a certain degree of selectivity but only affecting some variables and countries. Different probability models corroborate the existence of a certain non-random attrition. The model chosen to construct the longitudinal weights to correct attrition offers up rather different results than those obtained when Eurostat’s longitudinal weights are used. Although attrition does not seem to have a great effect on aggregated mobility indicators, it does have a decisive effect on decomposition exercises. Finally, the tests conducted...

En este trabajo contribuimos al estudio de la movilidad de ingresos de corto plazo en América Latina computando la importancia de los movimientos demográficos en las fluctuaciones del ingreso familiar. Explotando el esquema rotativo de las encuestas de hogares de siete países latinoamericanos, construimos paneles cortos que permiten cuantificar el tamaño y relevancia de los cambios de composición de los
hogares en ventanas temporales anuales. Encontramos evidencia de un peso pequeño pero significativo de los movimientos demográficos como factor explicativo de la movilidad de ingresos en el corto plazo. Adicionalmente, exploramos la existencia de estrategias de los hogares para suavizar la evolución de su ingreso per cápita ante movimientos demográficos que se pueden interpretar como shocks exógenos.

The legitimacy of inequality concerning the income distribution in market economies is based on the assumprion of a dominant individual performance and the assumed existence of equal chances. To test the empirical relevance of this assumption requires the analysis of the determinants of the income level as well of income mobility. Whereas the scientific discussion traditionally is centered on the

This paper uses the methods proposed by Antman y Mckenzie (2007) to tests the existence of poverty traps in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. We model the income dynamics of households and their reactions to recessions. We also focus in income trajectories for different educational levels, and estimate the rate at which households overcome poverty situations or return to their equilibrium income level after a shock. The results do find evidence of nonlinearities in household income dynamics. Further when educational levels are taken into account, poverty traps with non-convex income dynamics are found in the cases of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay for households whose head belongs to low educational levels. These results are in stark contrast with previous empirical applications.

This paper tests the existence of poverty traps in three Southern Cone countries: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. We apply the methodology developed by Antman and McKenzie (2005): based on pseudopanels, we model the income dynamics of households and analyze the ...

This paper introduces various sources of consumer heterogeneity in one-sector representative consumer (RC) growth models and develops tools to study the evolution of the distribution of consumptions, assets, and incomes. These tools are applied to the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model of optimal savings and the Arrow-Romer model of productive spillovers. The RC property per se places very few restrictions on the nature of observed distributions, and a wide range of distributive dynamics and income mobility patterns can arise as the equilibrium outcome. An example illustrates how to use these tools to generate quantitative predictions and compare them to the data. (JEL E13, O41)

Most previous studies of intergenerational transmission of human capital are restricted to two generations – parents and their children. In this study we use a Swedish data set which enables us link individual measures of lifetime earnings for three generations and data on educational attainments of four generations. We investigate to what extent estimates based on income data from two generations accurately predicts earnings persistence beyond two generations. We also do a similar analysis for intergenerational persistence in educational attainments. We find two-generation studies to severely under-predict intergenerational persistence in earnings and educational attainment over three generations. Finally, we use our multigenerational data on educational attainment to estimate the structural parameters in the Becker-Tomes model. Our results suggest a small or no causal effect of parental education on children's educational attainment.

This paper tests the existence of poverty traps in three Southern Cone countries: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. We apply the methodology developed by Antman and McKenzie (2005): based on pseudopanels, we model the income dynamics of households and analyze the existence of heterogeneity in their path and their reactions to recessions. We also focus in income trajectories for different educational levels, and estimate the rate at which households overcome poverty situations or return to their equilibrium income level after a shock. The record of high volatility and strong macroeconomic crisis shared by Argentina, Uruguay and to a lesser extent Brazil, are an opportunity to carry out this type of analysis, which in turn is justified as a contribution to the design of public policies. This papers aims at identifying situations where the future trajectory of households’ income will be systematically below a certain threshold, as a result of past performance. General estimates do not con...