Consolidating the Evidence on Income Mobility in the Western States of Germany and the U.S. from 1984-2006 / Gulgun Bayaz-Ozturk, Richard V. Burkhauser, Kenneth A. Couch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bayaz-Ozturk, Gulgun.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Burkhauser, Richard V.

Couch, Kenneth A.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18618.

NBER working paper series no. w18618

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.

Summary:

The cross-national intragenerational income mobility literature assumes within-country mobility is invariant over the period measured. We argue that a great social transformation--German reunification-- abruptly and permanently altered economic mobility. Using standard measures of mobility (with panel data for the western states of Germany and the U.S.) over the entire period 1984-2006, we find the conventional result that income mobility is greater in Germany. But when we cut the data into moving five-year windows and compare mobility before and after reunification, income mobility declines significantly over the years immediately following reunification in Germany but not in the U.S.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2012.