This chapter summarizes what has been learned from recent research on intergenerational transmission of earnings status. The chapter begins by using a simple theoretical model to highlight several key concepts. Then it reviews (and discusses the connections among) three related empirical...

[...]This paper is an interim report on continuingwork that we began in 1988. Our earlier research on thecauses of wage structure changes in the 1980s (Bound andJohnson 1992) showed that part of explanation A (theslowdown in the growth rate of that fraction of the workforce with high levels of...