Multidimensional intergenerational mobility

Abstract

In this paper, we present novel evidence of the extent to which intergenerational mobility is generalized or specific across domains of human and health capital. That is, do children who experience greater mobility in one domain (e.g., income) also experience mobility in other domains (education, health status, health behaviors, crime). Using rich data in Add Health, we find evidence against generalized mobility—families that are more mobile in one domain are not more mobile in others. We then ask a place-based version of this question, motivated by Chetty et al. (2014)'s work showing high levels of geographically-based income mobility in the US. The school-based sampling combined with parent-child links across many outcome domains of the Add Health allows us to use a common dataset between the two analyses. Like our individual-based results, we find limited evidence of generalized mobility by place—indeed, most estimates suggest close-to-zero correlations between many of the ten domains we explore.