Chay, Guryan and Mazumder (2009) found substantial racial convergence in AFQT and NAEP scores across cohorts born in the 1960's and early 1970's that was concentrated among blacks in the South. We demonstrated a close tracking between variation in the test score convergence across states and...

This volume was prepared by Jens Ruhose while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes four self-contained chapters that contribute to the understanding of the...

This assessment of the present context for evolving socio-economic patterns and trends in the United States is intended to support consideration of prospects for gains in income shares among the lower income population, recognising that the United States is: a very large heterogeneous...

The Gini coefficient is based on the sum of pairwise income differences, which can be decomposed into separate sums for individuals. Differences vis-à-vis poorer people represent an individual's advantage, while those with respect to richer people constitute deprivation. Weighting deprivation...

This paper is the first to analyze intergenerational economic mobility based on sibling correlations in permanent earnings in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and the US. The main findings are as follows: the importance of family and community background in...

This paper examines whether rising house prices immediately prior to children entering their college years impacts their intergenerational earnings mobility and/or educational outcomes. Higher house prices provide homeowners, especially liquidity constrained ones, with additional funding to...