TY - JOUR AU - Kopczuk,Wojciech AU - Saez,Emmanuel AU - Song,Jae TI - Uncovering the American Dream: Inequality and Mobility in Social Security Earnings Data since 1937 JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 13345 PY - 2007 Y2 - August 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13345 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13345.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Wojciech Kopczuk Columbia University 420 West 118th Street, Rm. 1022 IAB MC 3323 New York, NY 10027 Tel: 212/854-2519 Fax: 212/864-8059 E-Mail: wk2110@columbia.edu Emmanuel Saez Department of Economics University of California, Berkeley 530 Evans Hall #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720 Tel: 510/642-4631 Fax: 510/642-6615 E-Mail: saez@econ.berkeley.edu Jae Song Social Security Administration Office of Quality Performance 2121 Crystal Drive, Suite 825 Arlington, VA 22202 E-Mail: jae.song@ssa.gov AB - This paper uses Social Security Administration longitudinal earnings micro data since 1937 to analyze the evolution of inequality and mobility in the United States. Earnings inequality follows a U-shape pattern, decreasing sharply up to 1953 and increasing steadily afterwards. We find that short-term and long-term (rank based) mobility among all workers has been quite stable since 1950 (after a temporary surge during World War II). Therefore, the pattern of annual earnings inequality is very close to the pattern of inequality of longer term earnings. Mobility at the top has also been very stable and has not mitigated the dramatic increase in annual earnings concentration since the 1970s. However, the stability in long-term earnings mobility among all workers masks substantial heterogeneity across demographic groups. The decrease in the gender earnings gap and the substantial increase in upward mobility over a career for women is the driving force behind the relative stability of overall mobility measures which mask declines in mobility among men. In contrast, overall inequality and mobility patterns are not significantly influenced by the changing size and structure of immigration nor by changes in the black/white earnings gaps. ER -