Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/107644 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Diskussionsbeitrag No. 538
Publisher: 
Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Hannover
Abstract: 
Motivated by contradictory evidence on intergenerational mobility in Germany, I present a cross-country comparison of Germany and the US, reassessing the question of whether intergenerational mobility is higher in Germany than the US. I can reproduce the standard result from the literature, which states that the German intergenerational elasticity estimates are lower than those for the US. However, based on highly comparable data, even a reasonable degree of variation in the sampling rules leads to similar estimates in both countries. I find no evidence for nonlinearities along the fathers' earnings distribution. In contrast, the analysis shows that mobility is higher for the sons at the lowest quartile of the sons' earnings distribution in both countries. In Germany this result is mainly driven by a high downward mobility of sons with fathers in the upper middle part of the earnings distribution. The corresponding pattern is clearly less pronounced in the US.
Subjects: 
intergenerational mobility
SOEP
CNEF
Germany
US
JEL: 
J62
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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