Comments on: Absolute mobility

By: lukas

lukas — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:01:51 +0000

How come the overall numbers are very similar between blacks and whites, but when you break it down by quintiles the disparity is much wider? Is there some stat magic here?

By: SteveO

SteveO — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:22:29 +0000

The family composition chart on page 3 seems very relevant.

By: GMU Phil. Dude

GMU Phil. Dude — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:23:53 +0000

The link is broken, and it is very long.

Here's a short version:

http://alturl.com/4jfm

By: vikingvista

vikingvista — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:28:46 +0000

There is the expected regression to the mean, so I'm not really sure how to take these results. Wouldn't it be more informative to follow individuals' incomes over time rather than comparing parents to offspring?

By: kebko

kebko — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:19:33 +0000

Russ, I think your link might be broken.

By: LowcountryJoe

LowcountryJoe — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:00:14 +0000

The percentages alone are not enough to blow me away. Yes, it is impressive that the majority of children that were born to mid to lower quintile parents did better than their parents. What would be helpful is to find out how much better they did and what percentage ended up in what quintile. I am really surprised that the percentage of children from the top quintile is as high as it is; I had assumed that even given what a troll might call "the bettre environment to be born into", that more chilren in those situations wouldn't meet the income-earning potential of their very suceessful parents. I have this image of many children of successful families letting their parents down, adopting destructive habits, becoming slackers, or, best case scenario, not have the same drive or talents.

By: Ironman

Ironman — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:55:13 +0000

Speaking of following people, here's a chart showing how bachelor degree earners can expect their incomes to change, as a percentage of their "starting" income, over the first 25 years after they leave school.

The anomaly, 2001, was a year in which the average starting income for new college graduates was unusually high - this is an artifact of the recession of that year (basically, the graduates in certain highly demanded fields skewed the statistics as fewer of those graduating in lesser demanded fields found work.)