Abstract
Numerous studies have estimated a high intergenerational correlation in economic status. Such studies do not typically attend to potential biases that may arise due to survey attrition. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics – the data source most commonly used in prior studies – we demonstrate that attrition is particularly high for low-income adult children with low-income parents and particularly low for high-income adult children with high-income parents. Because of this pattern of attrition, intergenerational upward mobility has been overstated for low-income families and downward mobility has been understated for high-income families. The bias among low-income families is greater than the bias among high-income families implying that intergenerational elasticity in family income is higher than previous estimates with the Panel Study of Income Dynamics would suggest.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 351-372 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Journal of Economic Inequality |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 30 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Attrition
- Family income
- Intergenerational transmission
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management