Social scientists and policy analysts have long expressed concern about the extent of intergenerational income mobility in the United States, but remarkably little empirical evidence is available. The few existing estimates of the intergenerational correlation in income have been biased downward...

Researchers in a variety of important economic literatures have assumed that current income variables as proxies for lifetime income variables follow the textbook errors-in-variables model. In our analysis of Social Security records containing nearly career-long earnings histories for the Health...

During the 1980s, a period in which the average level of real wage rates was roughly stagnant, there were large changes in the structure of relative wages, most notably a huge increase in the relative wages of highly educated workers. This paper attempts to assess the power of several...

One long-standing hypothesis about science and engineering labor markets is that the supply of highly skilled workers is likely to be inelastic in the short run. We consider the market for computer scientists and electrical engineers (IT workers) and the evolution of wages and employment through...

Applicants for Social Security disability benefits who fail to pass the medical screening form a natural "control" group for beneficiaries. Data drawn from the 1972 and 1978 surveys of the disabled done for the Social Security Administration show that fewer than 50 percent of rejected male...