This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. American Economic Review
  4. November 2023
  5. Measuring Upward Mobility

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Measuring Upward Mobility

  • Debraj Ray ⓡ
  • Garance Genicot
American Economic Review
vol. 113, no. 11, November 2023
(pp. 3044–89)
Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

We conceptualize and measure upward mobility over income or wealth. At the core of our exercise is the Growth Progressivity Axiom: transfers of instantaneous growth rates from relatively rich to poor individuals increases upward mobility. This axiom, along with mild auxiliary restrictions, identifies an "upward mobility kernel" with a single free parameter, in which mobility is linear in individual growth rates, with geometrically declining weights on baseline incomes. We extend this kernel to trajectories over intervals. The analysis delivers an upward mobility index that does not rely on panel data. That significantly expands our analytical scope to data-poor settings.

Citation

Ray, Debraj ⓡ Garance Genicot. 2023. "Measuring Upward Mobility." American Economic Review, 113 (11): 3044–89. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20220316

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
  • D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
  • I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
  • O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
  • O40 Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General