Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective
Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, Sonya R. Porter
Summary
Using de-identified longitudinal data covering nearly the entire U.S. population, the authors study racial and ethnic differences in intergenerational income mobility. They find persistent black-white income gaps driven primarily by differences among men, while black and white women have similar outcomes conditional on parental income. They show neighborhood and family-background factors explain little of the gap, which persists even within the same neighborhoods.
Key findings
- Black Americans have substantially lower upward mobility and higher downward mobility than white Americans, perpetuating income gaps across generations.
- Conditional on parent income, the black-white gap is driven entirely by differences in men's wages and employment; black and white women have comparable outcomes.
- The black-white gap among boys persists in 99% of Census tracts, indicating place and family characteristics explain little of it.
Subjects & keywords
Cite this paper
Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, & Sonya R. Porter (2020). Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz042
@article{chetty2020race,
author = {Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren and Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter},
title = {Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective},
journal = {The Quarterly Journal of Economics},
year = {2020},
doi = {10.1093/qje/qjz042},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz042}
}