1. Home
  2. Studies
  3. Like father, like son?: A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US
Maximilian Stockhausen in Journal of Economic Inequality External Publication 17. August 2021 Like father, like son?: A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US

Are children better off than their parents? This highly debated question in politics and economics is investigated by analysing the trends in absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility for Germany and the US.

to Download
External Publication
A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US
Maximilian Stockhausen in Journal of Economic Inequality External Publication 17. August 2021

Like father, like son?: A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US

to Download Quote

Copy the information

The link was added to your clipboard!

Share this article:

or copy the following link:

The link was added to your clipboard!

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

Are children better off than their parents? This highly debated question in politics and economics is investigated by analysing the trends in absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility for Germany and the US.

High quality panel data is used for this purpose; the SOEP for Germany and the PSID for the US. In Germany, 67% of sons born between 1955 and 1975 earned a significantly higher real long-run labour income than their fathers. Those with fathers from the lowest earnings bracket were particularly mobile in absolute terms. In contrast, the fraction of US sons earning more than their fathers is 60% on average for the same cohorts. Their share decreased from 66% in the 1956–60 birth cohort to 48% in the 1971–75 birth cohort, while it changed very little in Germany. Overall, absolute as well as relative labour income mobility is larger in Germany than in the US. This indicates that economic growth has been distributed more broadly in Germany than in the US. While the majority of German males has been able to share in the country’s rising prosperity and are better off than their fathers, US males continue to lose ground. Hence, Chetty et al. (Science 356:398–406, 2017) seem to be right when they say that the American Dream is slowly fading away.

to Download
External Publication
A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US
Maximilian Stockhausen in Journal of Economic Inequality External Publication 17. August 2021

Like father, like son?: A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US

to Download Quote

Copy the information

The link was added to your clipboard!

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

Share this article:

or copy the following link:

The link was added to your clipboard!

More on the topic

Read the article
Matthias Diermeier / Madeleine F. Fischer / Judith Niehues in SOEP papers External Publication 20. March 2023

Punching up or Punching down?: How Stereotyping the Rich and the Poor Impacts Redistributive Preferences in Germany

Redistribution and the welfare state have been linked by academic discourse to narratives that portray specific societal groups as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’. The present analysis contributes to this scholarship in a twofold manner.

IW

Read the article
Maximilian Stockhausen IW-Report No. 63 26. November 2022

IW Distribution Report 2022: Influence of structural changes on income distribution

Academization, immigration and demographic change are defining issues of our time and influence the distribution of income. This year's report therefore focuses on the question of which long-term structural changes in the net income distribution are associated ...

IW

More about this topic

Content element with id 8880 Content element with id 9713