Like Great-Grandparent, Like Great-Grandchild? Multigenerational Mobility in American History
We link millions of Americans across four generations from 1850 to 1950 and find that economic advantages persist despite immense structural change. Great-grandfathers’ economic status predicts great-grandchildren’s occupations, wages, and education. Strong education correlations for first and second cousins confirm low relative mobility without relying on occupation-based status measures. Within race, parent-child models understate persistence across four generations, but accounting for measurement error closes most of this gap for white families and Black families. However, parent-child models still understate persistence in the pooled population because racial gaps narrow slowly. Long-run persistence therefore reflects durable family-level status and persistent group inequalities.
-
-
Copy CitationZachary Ward, Kasey Buckles, and Joseph Price, "Like Great-Grandparent, Like Great-Grandchild? Multigenerational Mobility in American History," NBER Working Paper 33923 (2025), https://doi.org/10.3386/w33923.Download Citation
-
Related
More from the NBER
In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals—the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, the Bulletin on the Economics of Alzheimer's, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship—as well as research spotlights, lectures, and panel videos.
