Much of America's promise is predicated on the existence of economic mobility - the idea that people are not limited or defined by where they start, but can move up the economic ladder based on their efforts and accomplishments. Family income mobility - changes in individual families' real...

Popular discussion of income and wealth distribution tend to focus on snapshots of distribution at a given moment in time, making it appear more unequal than it really is. This paper looks at mobility in and out of income and wealth distribution classes. It finds that all empirical measures of...

We propose a social welfare function to evaluate a profile of income streams and compare the welfare gain of the actual profile relative to the income profile where the individual receives his first period income in each period. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the welfare...

A long-lasting scientific and policy debate queries the impact of growth on distribution. A specific branch of the micro-oriented literature, known as 'pro-poor growth', seeks in particular to understand the impact of growth on poverty. Much of that literature supposes that the distributional...

Much of America's promise is predicated on economic mobility — the possibility that people can move up and down the economic ladder during their lifetimes. Mobility is of particular consequence when economic disparities are increasing. Using panel data and mobility concepts and measures...

The bulk of economic studies on income distribution focus on the poor and/or on the rich, mostly ignoring those who fall between these two categories. Research on the polarisation of incomes reverses this perspective, considering the middle-income group as a crucial element of analysis. The...

Using longitudinal household data and an econometric model of conditional poverty transitions, this paper contributes to the growing literature on poverty dynamics in Australian households. The results reveal that a range of household head, partner and demographic characteristics in addition to...

This paper analyses the duration of child poverty in Germany. In our sample, we observe the entire income history from the individuals' birth to their coming of age at age 18. Therefore we are able to analyze dynamics in and out of poverty for the entire population of children, whether they...

We provide an analytical framework within which changes in income inequality over time are related to the pattern of income growth across the income range, and the reshuffling of individuals in the income pecking order. We use it to explain how it was possible both for "the poor" to have fared...