Abstract: This paper provides the first estimates of intergenerational mobility in the antebellum United States. Using surname-based estimators and novel data on colonial migration, I examine the intergenerational mobility of Americans who descended from transported English convicts, who accounted for 10% of all white immigrants during the colonial period. I find that having a convict ancestor is associated with a 9% lower probability of real estate ownership in 1850, a disadvantage that persists at 8% by 1940. This pattern extends to various socioeconomic outcomes. Leveraging exogenous variation in convicts' arrival locations in the US, I show that geographic factors play a crucial role in the persistence of inequality. I further demonstrate that attributes specific to convicts, such as criminal tendencies or social stigmatization, cannot fully account for these results. I calculate a lower-bound intergenerational wealth elasticity estimate of 0.63 between 1750 and 1850. These findings provide new insights into the long-term persistence of initial disadvantages and the structural barriers to social mobility faced by the bottom strata of society.
Abstract: Most variables used in intergenerational mobility research, such as income, are not transmitted directly from parents to children. Instead, a combination of underlying factors is transmitted, and not modeling these channels of transmission results in under-predicting more distant correlations, known as the grandparent puzzle. The main challenge is data constraints, as intergenerational data is often historical and has few economic variables consistently recorded across generations. I argue that intergenerational transmission is essentially a multi-dimensional process and intergenerational correlations are best approximated by a power law across generational distance, which is the asymptotic result of multiple transmission channels. Using the universe of published multigenerational results, I show that the power law is the best and the only unbiased predictor of multigenerational correlations, outperforming the latent factor model and models incorporating direct grandparent effects. I then use the historical US Census microdata to understand mechanisms behind this result. I show that regardless of the amount of measurement error or temporal shift, no single-channel transmission process can generate the observed intergenerational data, and multiple transmission channels can be documented in the Census. These results imply that there is no tension with long-run persistence and high parent-child mobility, and mobility is not governed by a single, universal parameter.
Abstract: Intergenerational mobility is usually summarized by a single parent-child slope. That statistic is useful, but it implies that dynastic correlations should disappear within a few generations and that inequality-mobility patterns such as the Great Gatsby curve should be difficult to reproduce. We show that both problems are resolved by a minimal extension of the canonical AR(1) model: adding a permanent lineage component. Using linked full-count U.S. censuses from 1860 to 1940, we assemble 10.6 million father-son pairs in 2.8 million dynasties and compare the resulting AR(1)+lineage-effects model with standard autoregressive alternatives. Estimated only on 1860-1900 data, AR models predict that long-run persistence should vanish and underpredict the rise in occupational-score inequality observed in 1920 and 1940. The lineage-effects model, by contrast, matches both the correlation with the 1860 patriarch and the path of the Gini out of sample. We then derive closed-form steady-state expressions for inequality and persistence as functions of within-lineage reversion, lineage dispersion, and transitory shocks. The decomposition shows that dispersion in permanent lineage means, not the parent-child elasticity, is the main driver of long-run inequality and persistence. This yields a structural Great Gatsby curve and reframes mobility policy: reducing inherited lineage advantage has larger long-run implications than marginally increasing parent-child mobility.
Colonial Migration to the US (with Taylor Jaworski)
Early Life Events and Legal Decision-Making of American Judges (with Pablo Zarate)
Historical Development of Inequality of Opportunity in the United States (with Francisco Ferreira)