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Rags, riches, and race: The intergenerational economic mobility of black and white families in the United States
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... Finally, the paper contributes to the broad literature on intergenerational mobility in American history (inter alia, Aaronson and Mazumder 2008;Long and Ferrie 2013;Olivetti and Paserman 2015;Bleakley and Ferrie 2016;Ager, Boustan, and Eriksson 2019;Tan 2023), including work that specifically addresses racial differences (Hertz 2005;Mazumder 2014;Collins and Wanamaker 2022;Derenoncourt 2022;Jácome, Kuziemko, and Naidu 2022;Ward 2023). It deepens these literatures by providing new insights into the economic outcomes of formerly enslaved men and women and their children, with unprecedented detail on variation 5 Specifically, we construct a dataset with national coverage for perspective on overall Black-White gaps, we examine a wide range of intergenerational outcomes, we compare sons of farmers of all tenure statuses and sons of men in other occupational categories, and we provide insight on whether status transmission was centered within households as opposed to variation in local characteristics. ...
Large and persistent racial disparities in land-based wealth were an important legacy of the Reconstruction era. To assess how these disparities were transmitted intergenerationally, we build a dataset to observe Black households’ landholdings in 1880 alongside a sample of White households. We then link sons from all households to the 1900 census records to observe their economic and human capital outcomes. We show that Black landowners, relative to laborers, transmitted substantial intergenerational advantages to their sons, particularly in literacy and homeownership. However, such advantages were small relative to the racial gaps in measures of economic status.
... Furthermore, differences between parental SES groups are relative and not absolute. As a result, upward mobility out of the lower parental SES group and downward mobility out of the highest parental SES group may be most likely to occur among adolescents whose parental SES is already closest to the middle parental SES group, whereas social reproduction is generally most rigid in the lowest and highest socioeconomic strata (De Neubourg et al., 2018;Hertz, 2009). While this would potentially result in overestimated or skewed odds for experiencing social mobility, our current extensive group comparisons provide sufficiently nuanced findings. ...
Relatively little is known about which competencies adolescents need to experience intergenerational social mobility. We investigated if intelligence, effortful control, assertiveness, and peer competence at age 11 was associated with upward or downward mobility at age 26, utilizing data from the TRAILS study ( N = 2229; age T1 = 11.1 ( SD = 0.55); 50.8% girls). Results from our multinomial logistic regressions indicate that intelligence and effortful control, but not social competencies, are associated with upward mobility. Only intelligence was associated with downward mobility. Having dissimilar levels of competence than peers with the same parental SES was more important for social mobility than having similar competencies as peers with the same young adulthood SES. Social mobility thus happens primarily based on competence. However, given the importance of genetic predispositions and socioeconomic environment for intelligence and effortful control, and the limited appreciation of alternative competencies, social mobility remains to some extent unmeritocratic.
... It is important to appreciate that a comparison of farming and nonfarming households based solely on the most widely used measure of mobility, i.e., IGRC (ψ f 1 and ψ n 1 ), may be misleading. The caveat that IGRC or other measures of relative mobility such as intergenerational correlation (IGC) may be misleading in comparing mobility across groups has been emphasized by Hertz (2005), Mazumder (2014), and Bhattacharya and Majumder (2011) in their analysis of racial (black-white) differences in intergenerational income mobility in United States of America. But it has not been adequately appreciated in the literature on intergenerational educational mobility, both in economics and sociology. ...
We extend the Becker-Tomes model to a rural economy with farm-nonfarm occupational dualism to study intergenerational educational mobility in rural China and India. Using data free of coresidency bias, we find that fathers’ nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining sons schooling in India, but separable in China. Sons faced lower mobility in India irrespective of fathers’ occupation. Sensitivity analysis using the Altonji et al. (J. Polit. Econ. 113(1), 151–84, 2005) approach suggests that genetic correlations alone could explain the intergenerational persistence in China, but not in India. Farm-nonfarm differences in returns to education, and geographic mobility are plausible mechanisms behind the contrasting cross-country evidence.
... Given the differences in the quantity and quality of students' social networks and coping strategies across the college years, 46 we controlled for age and level of study (senior vs. non-seniors). Furthermore, we controlled for family income, given its relationship with racial-ethnic identity 47,48 and first-generation status 49 in the United States. Additionally, based on research that suggests that there are different opportunities for social support based on one's living situation, 50 we controlled for whether students lived alone or with other people. ...
Objective:
This study examined socio-demographic characteristics and COVID-19 experiences as concurrent predictors of perceived familial and friend social support, social media use, and socio-emotional motives for electronic communication during the COVID-19 pandemic among college students.
Participants:
Participants were 619 emerging adults (18-29-year-olds) currently enrolled at, or recently graduated from, a U.S.-based college or university (Mean age = 21.8, SD = 2.2; 64% female; 60% Non-Hispanic White).
Methods:
Online surveys were administered between May and June 2020. A path analysis model was conducted to examine the concurrent associations between socio-demographic factors, COVID-19-related experiences, social media/electronic engagement, and perceived social support.
Results:
Findings indicated significant differences in perceived social support, social media use, and socio-emotional motives for electronic communication as a function of gender, race, sexual orientation, first-generation status, and relationship status.
Conclusions:
Our findings highlight the role of both individual and situational differences in interpersonal functioning and demonstrate how college students differently engaged with social media for socio-emotional purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
... It is, however, important to recognize that, to understand heterogeneity across groups, cohorts, or countries, the three measures of relative mobility discussed above are not adequate, we also need to look at the intercept estimates of the intergenerational regression equations (Equations 1, 2, and 4). The fact that the measures of relative mobility can be misleading for inter-group comparison of mobility has been emphasized by Mazumder (2014) and Hertz (2005) in their analysis of black-white differences in intergenerational mobility in the USA. 33 ...
This chapter provides an analytical survey and synthesis of economic literature on intergenerational mobility in developing countries, with a focus on data and methodological challenges. Sample truncation from co-residency and measurement error cause substantial downward bias in intergenerational regression coefficient, whereas intergenerational correlation and intergenerational rank correlation are more robust to such data limitations. To understand heterogeneity, reliable estimates of both the intercept and the slope are necessary. The OLS estimate of the intercept is biased upward, but less so in the rank–rank regression. Sibling correlation is a broader measure of mobility, especially convenient with limited data. Estimating intergenerational causal effects is challenging as it requires long panel data. A promising alternative is to focus on the causal effects of policies on measurement of relative and absolute mobility, without disentangling the role of genetic inheritance.
This article examines intergenerational educational mobility among various ethnic and religious groups in Turkey. We focus on directional mobility and show that ethnic Kurds have significantly lower upward mobility than ethnic Turks, and Alevis observe marginally higher upward mobility relative to their Sunni counterparts. The region an individual is born into also makes a difference. Those who are born in the eastern part of the country exhibit lower mobility than those who are born in the west. There is a significant difference in mobility between men and women irrespective of their ethnic origin or religious affiliation as well.
Persistent racial inequality in socioeconomic status within urban areas has been a significant concern in both the US and European countries. Differences across racial groups in intergenerational mobility (IM) have been identified as a key source of this persistence. However, efforts to understand racial inequality in IM have rarely considered the role of urban sprawl. This article argues that urban sprawl affects differences in IM between racial groups directly and indirectly through racial segregation, racial bias, and social capital. We analyze data from 874 metropolitan counties in the US using structural equation models to test these direct and indirect effects of sprawl on racial inequality in IM. We found that urban sprawl was negatively associated with racial inequality in IM. The direct effect, which we partially attribute to higher racial disparities in social capital in more compact counties, was statistically significant. For the indirect effects, racial segregation had the largest mediating effects between urban sprawl and racial inequality in IM, followed by economic connectedness (EC) and racial bias. The net indirect effect of sprawl on racial inequality in IM was negative because negative indirect effects through racial segregation and EC outweigh positive indirect effects through racial bias. Our findings demonstrate the significant role of urban form in racial inequality in IM.
A large body of evidence finds that relative mobility in the US has declined over the past 150 years. However, long-run mobility estimates are usually based on White samples and therefore do not account for the limited opportunities available for nonwhite families. Moreover, historical data measure the father’s status with error, which biases estimates toward greater mobility. Using linked census data from 1850 to 1940, I show that accounting for race and measurement error can double estimates of intergenerational persistence. Updated estimates imply that there is greater equality of opportunity today than in the past, mostly because opportunity was never that equal. (JEL J15, J62, N31, N32)
This book is concerned with the social science of poverty and covers topics ranging from the intricacies of measuring poverty using objective quantitative, income-based measures, to the interrelationships between structural violence, poverty, and social suffering; capability deprivation as the basis for analyzing poverty; ideologies and beliefs about poverty; how politics and institutions shape poverty and inequality; and the effects of poverty on child development. The book also explores the link between gender and poverty; the historical origins of poverty in developing countries; poor neighborhoods in the metropolis; how segregation perpetuates disadvantage; the association between nonmarital family structures, poverty, and inequality; whether social ties matter for poor people who are seeking employment; the link between poverty and education; intergenerational mobility; hunger and food insecurity; and the relation between crime and poverty.
We document the intergenerational mobility of Black and White American men from 1880 through 2000 by building new historical datasets for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and combining them with modern data to cover the middle and late twentieth century. We find large disparities in mobility, with White children having far better chances of escaping the bottom of the distribution than Black children in every generation. This mobility gap was more important in proximately determining each generation's racial gap than was the initial gap in parents' economic status. (JEL D31, J15, J62, N31, N32)
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