Talk:Economic mobility

bias
Ok, this article could be worse, but there is a persistent bias here. Everyone keeps refering to the United States. May I quote a (correct) part of the article:

all have more relative mobility than the US, while only the United Kingdom is shown to have less mobility[1].

By the above, it is not the United States, but the United Kingdom that should be the primary reference and the subject of this discussion. It is not least because everyones focus is on the United States that the British government is able to get away with so much. Focussing on the US in everything from Iraq to civil liberties has given the UK free liscence to do the same or far worse with total immunity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.100.144.242 (talk) 09:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Absolute Mobility as a concept
This statement seems odd: "80 percent of taxpayers had incomes in quintiles as high or higher in 2005 than they did in 1996, and 45 percent of taxpayers not in the highest income quintile moved up at least one quintile"

Is this even relevant? It seems almost disingenuous to use as it is not illustrative of the concept of economic mobility as most people imagine it. Almost everyone will find themselves with a pretty substantial increase in income after 9 years of experience in almost every culture and during any time in history. How is this useful information? --99.240.31.182 (talk) 18:34, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Relative Mobility as a Zero Sum Game
This statement needs a cite. It is far from obvious. Hmoulding (talk) 01:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Improvement needed in US Economic Mobility section
The section for US Economic Mobility needs to be improved. Right now, it is just a summary of one publication, one fact from another publication and the content I have added. The amount of specific information (percentages, etc) is larger than optimum for an encyclopedic article. The section should be trimmed to convey the important points with numbers to back the points up rather than just listing numerical conclusions of a publication. Bjp716 (talk) 02:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I can think of one obvious edit. It's clear that relative mobility cannot have an upward trend to it since it is necessarily 0 sum. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.151.59.138 (talk) 21:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. That section, and this article as a whole is largely based off of one study performed by a foundation which exists to promote a specific political agenda. There's a plethora of research out there, a quick search of lexis nexis brings up ten studies on economic mobility, there's no reason for this article to be so reliant on such a small pool of sources. I've added some new sources to the section on US Economic mobility, and I'm going to address the rest of the article when I get a chance. Hvatum (talk) 11:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

"Economic Mobility Worldwide" Edit
The section currently ends with the following: "However, other recent studies have concluded that relative mobility is equal or greater in the US [7] [8]." The problem is, neither of the sources conclude that.

Source 7 concludes that relative mobility is about the same. It bases its conclusion on data suggesting the U.S. has a slightly higher (statistically significant?) mobility FREQUENCY, while admitting that the US lags behind in mobility MAGNITUDE. As it is almost impossible for one to end up with exactly the same relative income as one's parents, a frequency test is an odd choice. It necessitates an arbitrary cutting of mobility into 2 sets (in this case, cross-quintile and intra-quintile), with intra-quintile movements and potentially vast differences among cross-quintile movements ignored. For example, a movement from the very bottom of Quintile 1 to the very top of Quintile 1 would not, by the frequency method, constitute mobility. On the other hand, the much less significant movement from the very top of Quintile 1 to the very bottom of Quintile 2 would not only constitute mobility but in fact the exact same amount of mobility as a movemement from the very bottom of Quintile 1 to the very top of Quintile 5. The only value of the frequency test seems to be that it's easier to understand. Source 7 is recent in the sense that 1996 is recent. The studies that show the Anglo-American world lagging behind are newer and go by income's correlation to parental income.

Source 8 is not even a comparison of countries. The only country it ever mentions is the U.S., and it concludes that mobility has decreased.

I'm going to change "equal to greater" to "about the same" and move [8] to External Links. Tomblikebomb (talk) 17:06, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

American dream remark
The mention of the American Dream in the introduction seems a bit America-centric, especially if it's not placed in the context of other cultural attitudes towards work. If there aren't any objections, I'll remove it to the US section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.65.3.182 (talk) 17:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Math
Note this sentence in the US section: "Although one third of the nation is moving up quintiles, another third is downwardly mobile — experiencing a decrease in income and economic standing compared to their parents." It is not a coincidence that upward and downward mobility are broadly equal. For every individual who moves up a quintile, there is by definition someone else who moves down. It's the same reason why about half of students perform below average in school; that's just the definition of average.

It looks like there needs to be a section discussing the definition of income mobility, how it differs from income growth, etc. I might start one, but I'm not educated on this topic.Oconnor663 (talk) 17:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Bias and inaccuracy
The Worldwide section starts with this sentence: Using the ratio of an individual’s current income to that of their parent’s, there is no academic consensus whether the United States has less or more relative mobility than other industrialized nations. This seems as odds with recent media information but it has two citations:
 * 1)  and
 * 2) the American Dream Report

leads viewers to this: http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/workingpapers/wp2005_12.pdf i.e. a calendar. click on one of the "snapshots" on the calendar and you get: "Page Not Found"  the original link -- http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/workingpapers/wp2005_12.pdf -- also leads to "page not found" i.e. the link is useless and does not go to any article.

The second cite, the American Dream Report, has this to say about "whether the United States has less or more relative mobility than other industrialized nations":

Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the United States than has long been presumed. The last thirty years has seen a considerable drop-off in median household income growth compared to earlier generations. And, by some measurements, we are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries.

Searching the page for either the word "academic" or "consensus" finds nothing about there being "no academic consensus whether the United States has less or more relative mobility"

The cite is highly misleading. The sentence is unsupported and contentious especially as the lead sentence of the section. I am going to delete it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 22:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

As much as you may talk about bias, this article is highly misleading. Economic mobility, in the way the studies frame it, does not include increases in the standard of living or overall economic opportunity. It is a study that wanted to frame the issue in a way to push various things. Excluding those two oh so important things makes it look bad for America. PokeHomsar (talk) 20:03, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Social Mobility article v Economic Mobility article
I suggested merging the two article a while back and got no support so I dropped the issue. Problem is: though there are differences in the two concepts, pretty much all the information in the non-academic media on mobility -- i.e. pretty much all the information of interest to the public -- is on vertical mobility by income, so there really isn't much to talk about in the Economic Mobility article that shouldn't also be in the social mobility article. Mucho overlap. --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:05, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Worldwide section
Please, get a better source than the Center for American Progress. They're about as close to propaganda as Media Matters. PokeHomsar (talk) 00:24, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Dr. Leigh's comment on this article
Dr. Leigh has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The article becomes technical too quickly. It would be worth discussing a bit about why mobility matters. A useful analogy is with height, where the hereditability of height has an elasticity of about 0.5. Here's a short piece where I had a go at getting the ideas across to a popular audience: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-03/leigh-why-even-conservatives-should-care-about-inequality/5788192

Beyond this, the long section on US intergenerational mobility can probably be cut (given that there is an entire article on this topic at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States). Note that the US bits are in two parts - first under the major heading of 'United States', and then again under the major headings 'Men and women', 'Black and white families', 'Education' and 'Immigration'. Given that these headings all relate solely to the US, they should be in the specific US mobility article, not the general mobility article.

Instead, the focus here should be on the international comparisons. Hopefully Miles Corak can update the entry based on his most recent analysis (this entry cites his 2006 work, but he has many more estimates now)."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Leigh has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Gong, Cathy Honge & Leigh, Andrew & Meng, Xin, 2010. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in Urban China," IZA Discussion Papers 4811, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 14:38, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Drakopoulos's comment on this article
Dr. Drakopoulos has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"1) A focus on how Americans’ rank on the income ladder compares to their parents, their peers, or even themselves over time is a measure of relative mobility. Please add: The notion of relative income is quite useful in this framework given that it has been applied to a variety of economic issues (see for instance, Drakopoulos, 2016).

Drakopoulos, S. A. (2016) Comparisons in Economic Thought: Economic interdependency reconsidered, London: Routledge.

2) Women in their 30s have substantially higher incomes today than their counterparts did in their parents’ generation. Please add: Although a gender pay gap still exists in many countries, even in the more developed ones (Blau and Kahn, 2000).

Blau F. and Kahn, L. (2000) ‘Gender differences in pay’ The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol .14 (4), pp.75 -99."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Drakopoulos has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Drakopoulos, Stavros A., 2008. "The Concept Of Comparison Income: An Historical Perspective," MPRA Paper 8713, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 11:12, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Stancanelli's comment on this article
Dr. Stancanelli has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"This article is very complete and nicely written. Now if anything, the focus appears to be mostly on the US, but on the other most of the available literature also focuses on the US."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Stancanelli has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Bellido, Hector & Molina, Jose Alberto & Solaz, Anne & Stancanelli, Elena G. F., 2013. "Which Children Stabilize Marriage?," IZA Discussion Papers 7858, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:39, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

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Dr. Schlicht's comment on this article
Dr. Schlicht has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"This is an excellent article. (I am not a specialist in mobility issues, though.) Just a small remark: in order that the reader can understand the figure under the "Worldwide" heading, some explanation of the meaning of "Intergenerational income elasticity" may be provided."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Schlicht has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Schlicht, Ekkehart, 2006. "Selection Wages: An Illustration," Discussion Papers in Economics 958, University of Munich, Department of Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 11:27, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

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very important paper on the georgia land lottery 50-year followup
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19348/w19348.pdf 2600:8801:20C:7500:F82F:A59C:C17D:A978 (talk) 21:36, 12 August 2021 (UTC)