Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/129372 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2015:13
Publisher: 
Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), Uppsala
Abstract: 
Estimates of the most common mobility measure, the intergenerational elasticity, can be severely biased if snapshots are used to approximate lifetime income. However, little is known about biases in other popular dependence measures. We use long Swedish income series to provide such evidence for linear and rank correlations, and rank-based transition probabilities. Attenuation bias is considerably weaker in rank-based measures. Life-cycle bias is strongest in the elasticity; moderate in the linear correlation; and small in rank-based measures. However, with important exceptions: persistence in the tails of the distribution is considerably higher, and long-distance downward mobility considerably lower, than estimates from short-run income suggest.
Subjects: 
intergenerational mobility
rank correlation
measurement error
JEL: 
J62
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
787.56 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.