Intergenerational income mobility has declined

Statement

The probability that a child born into the bottom quintile of the income distribution reaches the top quintile, and the simpler probability of out-earning one's parents at the same age, have both declined substantially across OECD economies — most steeply in the US — since the 1940s cohorts.

Data

• Share of US 30-year-olds earning more than their parents at the same age
  0.5 share · 2014 · US
  Chetty et al. — The Fading American Dream

Provenance

Sources

• Chetty et al. — Opportunity Insights mobility data
  dataset · Chetty, Grusky, Hell, Hendren, Manduca, Narang
  https://opportunityinsights.org/data/
  Probability that a child born to bottom-quintile parents reaches the top quintile has fallen by roughly half since 1940.
• OECD — A Broken Social Elevator
  report · 2018
  https://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-social-mobility-9789264301085-en.htm
  Cross-country evidence that it now takes 4-5 generations on average for low-income families to reach mean income in OECD economies.

Causal links