"Solon's (1992) landmark study estimated the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) in income between fathers and sons to be 0.4 or higher. This dramatically changed the consensus view of the U.S. as a highly mobile society. In this comment, I show both analytically and empirically how Solon and...

Traditional measures of intergenerational mobility such as the intergenerational elasticity are not useful for inferences concerning group differences in mobility with respect to the pooled income distribution. This paper uses transition probabilities and measures of "directional rank mobility"...

Traditional measures of inter-generational mobility such as the inter-generational elasticity are not useful for inferences concerning group differences in mobility with respect to the pooled income distribution. This paper uses transition probabilities and measures of “directional rank...

Lower intergenerational income mobility for blacks is a likely cause behind the persistent inter-racial gap in economic status in the US. However, few studies have analyzed black-white differences in intergenerational income mobility and the factors that determine these differences. This is...

The literature on intergenerational income mobility uses a diverse set of measures and there is limited knowledge about whether these measures provide similar information and yield similar conclusions. We provide a framework to highlight the key concepts and properties of the different...