Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/327983 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper Series No. 49
Publisher: 
University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality", Konstanz
Abstract: 
The strong evidence in support of the Great Gatsby Curve (i.e. the negative cross-sectional relationship between intergenerational mobility and inequality) seems to be at odds with the fact that large increases in inequality in the US have not resulted in decreases in mobility. We tackle this puzzle by measuring, for the first time, a dynamic version of the "Great Gatsby Curve" that relates changes in inequality to changes in intergenerational income mobility. We find that across US counties and during the last century the relationship is weak and unstable over relatively short intervals of two decades, but negative and significant over a longer period of almost a century. The historical record suggests that if the large increase of inequality observed in the US does not reverse, this may result in substantially lower socioeconomic mobility in the long term, even if mobility has not decreased yet.
Subjects: 
ntergenerational Mobility
Inequality
Great Gatsby Curve
JEL: 
J62
N12
N52
R11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





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