We estimate rates of “absolute income mobility” – the fraction of children who earn more than their parents – by combining historical data from Census and CPS cross-sections with panel data for recent birth cohorts from de-identified tax records. Our approach overcomes the key data...

We review the main distributional effects of the Great Recession and the ways in which those effects have been organized into narratives. The Great Recession may affect poverty, inequality, and other economic and noneconomic outcomes by changing individual-level behavior, encouraging the rise of...

We estimate rates of "absolute income mobility" - the fraction of children who earn more than their parents - by combining historical data from Census and CPS cross-sections with panel data for recent birth cohorts from de-identified tax records. Our approach overcomes the key data limitation...

Intro -- Contents -- Part I. Introduction -- Occupy the Future -- Part II. The Empirical and Normative Foundation -- Economic Inequality in the United States: An Occupy-Inspired Primer -- How Much Inequality Is There? -- Trends In Inequality -- Cross-National Comparisons -- The Sources of...