Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective
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.