Mobility as Progressivity: Ranking Income Processes According to Equality of Opportunity / Roland Benabou, Efe A. Ok.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benabou, Roland.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ok, Efe A.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8431.

NBER working paper series no. w8431

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Mobility as Progressivity

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2001.

Summary:

Interest in economic mobility stems largely from its perceived role as an equalizer of opportunities, though not necessarily of outcomes. In this paper we show that this view leads very naturally to a methodology for the measurement of social mobility which has strong parallels with the theory of progressive taxation. We characterize opportunity--equalizing mobility processes, and provide simple criteria to determine when one process is more equalizing than another. We then explain how this mobility ordering relates to social welfare analysis, and how it differs from existing ones. We also extend standard indices of tax progressivity to mobility processes, and illustrate our general methodology on intra- and intergenerational mobility data from the United States and Italy.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2001.