Paper: Auten, Gee & Turner (2013) AER P&P

"Income Inequality, Mobility, and Turnover at the Top in the US, 1987-2010", 5-page piece in the AER papers & proceedings. Note: this is a worse and shorter version of Auten, Gee & Turner (2013) NTJ, for all purposes, refer to that paper instead. 
Overall, I think this is not super interesting. Very high level of aggregation and almost no discussion of the data. Only section I is informative on low-income dynamics. 
Q to answer: what is the difference with the 2013 piece in the National Tax Journal?
This seems to be the worse version of Auten, Gee & Turner (2013) NTJ: "This paper extends our earlier paper Auten, Gee & Turner (2013) [AER P&P], which used four types of information returns, by using five additional information returns that capture most sources of income reported to the IRS for significant numbers of taxpayers." 
== Summary ==
=== Introduction ===
This project builds on prior work using tax data (Auten & Gee, 2009). 
Provides new evidence on four dimensions of how incomes change over time, organized in sections I through IV.
Data: 
* Not sure, yet exactly how to summarize. I think they just compare 1987 to 2007 data?
* What exactly is income here?
=== I. Long-Term Within-Cohort Mobility ===
Quite simple: they take people aged 35-40 in 1987 and compare the income quintiles for these people in 1987 with their income quintiles in 2007. See Table 1.
Attrition is interesting: 
* Overall 8.5% attrition: 5.8% died and no 2007 tax record found for 2.7%
* Attrition in the lowest quintile was 16% compared to 4.4% for the highest quintile. Death rates were 9% and 3.5% respectively, leaving 7% and 1.1% of non-death attrition for the lowest and highest quintiles. 
* They note that "It may be possible to learn more about these individuals in future research". I would guess it would be quite feasible and interesting to further dissect what the causes of differential attrition are. 
=== II. Intergenerational Mobility ===
Compare the income quintiles of parents in 1987 and the quintiles claimed dependents relative to their peers 20 years later: See table 2.
* 1987 cash income parent quintiles are calculated based on 1987 SOI taxpayers age 25-65 with claimed dependents of age 15-18.This must be of only the parents? Otherwise we wouldn't expect the row to add up to 100%?
* 2007 quintile breaks derived by calculating the breaks separately for each age year and aggregating the results, to control for both a year and age-specific effect. 
=== III. Persistence at the Top ===
Examines persistence of top 1% income in tax returns for a rolling 5-year window ahead. Sample based on taxpayers aged 25-60 (to avoid the bulk of retirements). See table 3, on average about 70% remains in the top 1% for one year, and 30% remains in the top 1% for the next five years.
=== IV. Birth Cohort and Life Cycle Effects ===
Didn't find these super informative: (Figure 1): share of each birth cohort in the top 1% of tax return income, (Figure 2): income centiles by age in 2007.
=== V. Conclusions ===
They don't make any: "we leave it to the reader to interpret the results an assess the meaning of the observe mobility and turnover at the top".