American exceptionalism in a new light : a comparison of intergenerational earnings mobility in the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the United States

摘要

We develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyse differences in intergenerationaludearnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland,udNorway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as welludas fathers and daughters using both mobility matrices and regression and correlation coefficients.udOur results suggest that all countries exhibit substantial earnings persistence acrossudgenerations, but with statistically significant differences across countries. Mobility is lower inudthe U.S. than in the U.K., where it is lower again compared to the Nordic countries. Persistenceudis greatest in the tails of the distributions and tends to be particularly high in the upperudtails: though in the U.S. this is reversed with a particularly high likelihood that sons of theudpoorest fathers will remain in the lowest earnings quintile. This is a challenge to the popularudnotion of ’American exceptionalism’. The U.S. also differs from the Nordic countries inudits very low likelihood that sons of the highest earners will show downward ’long-distance’udmobility into the lowest earnings quintile. In this, the U.K. is more similar to the U.S.