Title: Intergenerational economic mobility in the U.S., 1940 to 2000
Description: "We use two sample instrumental variables to estimate intergenerational economic mobility from 1940 to 2000.  We find intergenerational mobility increased from 1940 to 1980 but declined sharply thereafter, a pattern similar to cross-sectional inequality trends.  However, the returns to education account for only some of these patterns.  The time- series may help to reconcile previous findings in the intergenerational mobility literature.  Our estimates imply a somewhat different pattern for the intergenerational income correlation, a measure insensitive to changes in cross-sectional inequality that has implications for rank mobility.  We find the post-1980 decline in intergenerational rank mobility marks a return to historical levels.  Consequently, by 2000, the rate of intergenerational movement across the income distribution appears historically normal, but, as cross-sectional inequality has increased, earnings are regressing to the mean at a slower rate, causing economic differences between families to persist longer than earlier in the century"--Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago web site.