American exceptionalism in a new light
Subtitle: a comparison of intergenerational earnings mobility in the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the United States
By: by Markus Jñtti ... [et al.].
Series: Discussion paper -- no. 1938; Discussion paper (Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit : Online) -- no. 1938
Publisher: IZA
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Bonn, Germany
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Wealth -- Scandinavia; Wealth -- United States; Wealth -- Great Britain; Intergenerational relations -- Scandinavia; Intergenerational relations -- United States; Intergenerational relations -- Great Britain; Exceptionalism -- United States
Description: "We develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyse differences in intergenerational earnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as well as fathers and daughters using both mobility matrices and regression and correlation coefficients. Our results suggest that all countries exhibit substantial earnings persistence across generations, but with statistically significant differences across countries. Mobility is lower in the U.S. than in the U.K., where it is lower again compared to the Nordic countries. Persistence is greatest in the tails of the distributions and tends to be particularly high in the upper tails: though in the U.S. this is reversed with a particularly high likelihood that sons of the poorest fathers will remain in the lowest earnings quintile. This is a challenge to the popular notion of 'American exceptionalism'. The U.S. also differs from the Nordic countries in its very low likelihood that sons of the highest earners will show downward 'long-distance' mobility into the lowest earnings quintile. In this, the U.K. is more similar to the U.S."--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 2/9/2006.

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