Ethnic and gender differences in intergenerational mobility: a study of 26-year-olds in the USA

Abstract

This paper uses the traditional income framework and a non-monetary framework to estimate intergenerational mobility in economic status for a sample of 26 year-old whites, blacks and Hispanics in the USA using data from the first and fifth sweeps of the National Educational Longitudinal Study (1988 and 2000). Intergenerational income mobility is found to be greater for females than for males, though there are differences between whites, blacks and Hispanics. Transition probabilities indicate that Hispanics are the most upwardly mobile in terms of educational attainment and occupational status. Ordered logits are used to estimate the impact of parental education and occupation on educational and occupational outcomes.