Using harmonized household survey data, we analyse long run social mobility in the US, the UK, and Germany and test recent theories of multigenerational persistence of socio-economic status. In this country comparison setting we find evidence against Gregory Clark's "universal law of social...

Using data from the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2007, this paper analyses the amount, the development and the explanations of wage mobility, as well as volatility in West Germany, measured by ranks in the wage distribution. Individual wage mobility decreased between...

Alluding to theories about relative economic status and behavior, this paper studies if relative income mobility, or the intergenerational change in income positions, affects interpersonal trust. Empirically, the question is brought down to an application with US General Social Survey data. For...

Intragenerational mobility has been a central concern in sociology, especially in the latter half of the 20th century. Most of this analysis has proceeded using measures of social position that are functions of an individual's occupation. This approach has been based on two primary...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the dynamics of equivalent income in Germany in the eighties and nineties. Special emphasis is given to the separation of permanent and transitory components, the persistence of transitory shocks and their implications...

We provide an analytical framework within which changes in income inequality over time are related to the pattern of income growth across the income range, and the reshuffling of individuals in the income pecking order. We use it to explain how it was possible both for "the poor" to have fared...