The Great Escape: Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Since 1940⇤
نویسنده
چکیده
I develop a new method to estimate intergenerational mobility (IM) in educational attainment on U.S. census data spanning 19402000. I measure IM directly for children still living with parents at ages 26-29, and indirectly for other children using an imputation procedure that I validate in multiple datasets spanning the full sample period. Educational IM increased significantly 1940-1970 and declined after 1980. Post-1940 IM gains were economically large, driven by high school rather than college enrollment, and were larger for blacks primarily due to all-race IM gains in the South. I discuss potential causes of these patterns.
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