Dear Eden Werring,
Miles Corak wrote in his recent paper "Do poor children become poor adults?
Lessons for public policy from a cross country comparison of
generational earnings mobility*"
(<http://www.cerc.gouv.fr/meetings/colloque_avril2004/Corak.pdf>) that
"In the United States almost one half of children born to low income
parents become low income adults. This is an extreme case, but the
fraction is also high in the United Kingdom at four in ten, and Canada
where about one-third of low income children do not escape low income
in adulthood. In the Nordic countries, where overall child poverty
rates are noticeably lower, it is also the case that a
disproportionate fraction of low income children become low income
adults."
Another comparative study that investigated the same problem found
that "Intergenerational correlations in income also reveal that the
United States has less mobility in income across generations than most
other countries. Solon (2002), for example, reviews evidence
indicating that the correlation between fathers - and sons - earnings
is 0.40 or higher in the United States, .23 in Canada, 0.34 in
Germany, and 0.28 in Sweden. Only South Africa - still scarred by
apartheid - and the United Kingdom have close to as much immobility
across generations as the United States." (SOURCE: Alan B. Krueger,
"Inequality, Too Much of a Good Thing", 2002,
<http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/inequality4.pdf>).
Also "McMurrer and colleagues (1997) conclude that there remains a
substantial component of income immobility across generations in the
United States." (SOURCE: Jose J. Escarce, "Socioeconomic status and
the fates of adolescents - Editorial Column", Health Services
Research, Oct, 2003,
<http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m4149/5_38/110461718/p1/article.jhtml>).
According to Mayer and Lopoo (2004), the correlation between parents'
economic condition and their children's, is higher with daughter as it
with with sons.
In another article, Harding, Jencks, Lopoo and Mayer (2002) found that
race or other factors of social inequality effect immobility.
SOURCES
=======
David Harding, Christopher Jencks, Leonard Lopoo, and Susan Mayer,
"The Changing Effect of Family Background on the Incomes of American
Adults", <http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/inequality/Seminar/Papers/Jencks.pdf>.
Hertz, Tom (2004). "Rags, Riches and Race: The Intergenerational
Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the United States" ,
Forthcoming in Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne
(editors). _Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success_ .
Princeton: Princeton University Press and Russell Sage.
McMurrer, B. P., M. Condon, and I. V. Sawhill. 1997.
"Intergenerational Mobility in the United States." Working paper, no.
4 in series "Opportunity in America," Urban Institute, Washington, DC.
Mayer, Susan E. and Leonard M. Lopoo (2004). "?What do Trends in the
Intergenerational Economic Mobility of Sons and Daughters in the United States
Mean?" In Miles Corak (editor). _Generational Income Mobility in North America
and Europe_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
<http://www-cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/faculty/lopoo/selectedpapers/sons_daughters1-04.pdf>.
I hope this answered your question.
Search terms:
"united states" Intergenerational immobility "low income children"
"united states" Intergenerational mobility "low income children"
Intergenerational mobility "low income children"
"low-income children become"
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