Is the Simple Law of Mobility Really a Law? Testing Clark's Hypothesis

Abstract

Recent work by Gregory Clark and co-authors uses a new surnames approach to examine intergenerational mobility, finding much higher persistence rates than traditionally estimated. Clark proposes a model of social mobility to explain the diverging estimates, including the crucial but untested hypothesis that traditional estimates of intergenerational persistence are biased downward because they use only one measure (e.g. earnings) of underlying status. I test for evidence of this using an approach from Lubotsky and Wittenberg (2006), incorporating information from multiple measures into an estimate of intergenerational persistence with the least attenuation bias. Contrary to Clark's prediction, I do not find evidence of substantial bias in prior estimates. . et al. (2007) is an oft cited recent example providing intergenerational correlation and regression coefficients in educational attainment for 42 countries; Bj€ orklund and Salvanes (2011) also provide a succinct review of related literature. Additionally, another subset of the literature is concerned with intergenerational persistence in occupation or occupational prestige. Hodge (1966) is an early example studying intergenerational occupational mobility in the US, while Ferrie (2007, 2013) are more recent examples; see also Black and Devereux (2011) for a brief discussion of related studies.3 See Clark (2014) for a comprehensive list of these studies, as well as the more recent papers and . 4 For the data sources containing explicit socio-economic measures, such as probated wealth at death, (1) is estimated using the group averages of wealth for rare surnames. For data without such measures, the approach instead looks at persistence in the representation of the rare surname in an 'elite' group relative to representation in the population as a whole. 5 G€ uell et al. (2015) show that rare surnames do contain such information, and propose a method using the joint distribution of surnames and economic status to explore intergenerational transmission of status in Spain.

Correlating Social Mobility and Economic Outcomes

“…This shortcoming of the group estimators is well known and has been shown empirically by Chetty et al . (), and explained by Solon () and Vosters (). The approach we follow does not suffer from this bias because it uses individual‐level (as opposed to surname‐level) outcomes.…”

The Transmission of Inequality Across Multiple Generations: Testing Recent Theories With Evidence From Germany

“… Related, Vosters () and Vosters and Nybom () show that the aggregation of multiple status measures into a single ‘least‐attenuated’ estimate yields rates of persistence that are only modestly higher than estimates based on parental income only. …”

New Directions in Measuring Intergenerational Mobility: Introduction

“…Muchpublicised later work by Clark (2014) used surnames in another way, estimating intergenerational regressions with group-average data for rare surnames. The article by Vosters (2018) checks that hypothesis with US data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Clark pointed out that one of the testable hypotheses implied by his interpretation is that combining multiple indicators of socio-economic status in a micro-level analysis of intergenerational mobility would result in much higher estimates of intergenerational persistence.…”

“…Clark pointed out that one of the testable hypotheses implied by his interpretation is that combining multiple indicators of socio-economic status in a micro-level analysis of intergenerational mobility would result in much higher estimates of intergenerational persistence. The article by Vosters (2018) checks that hypothesis with US data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Contrary to Clark's conjecture, she finds only a marginal increase in estimated intergenerational persistence.…”