Recent studies use names - first and surnames - to estimate intergenerational mobility in sources that lack direct family links. While generating novel evidence on intergenerational transmission processes, it remains unclear how different estimators compare and how reliable they are. This paper...

A large body of evidence finds that relative mobility in the US has declined over the past 150 years. However, long-run mobility estimates are usually based on white samples and therefore do not account for the limited opportunities available for non-white families. Moreover, historical data...