Australia

Intergenerational Mobility: What Do We Care About? What Should We Care About?

Inequality threatens intergenerational income mobility, but different types of inequality threaten mobility in different ways, raising distinct policy challenges. This is why empirical researchers should be agnostic in the choice of statistics they use to measure intergenerational mobility.

I argue that Australia is on the whole characterised by a good deal of intergenerational mobility, but that a full picture requires judicious international comparisons across different dimensions of mobility citizens care about, mobility not just of incomes, but also of position and direction, particularly the scope for upward mobility.

Download my paper, which was published in the Australian Economic Review as:

Miles Corak (2020). “Intergenerational Mobility: What Do We Care About? What Should We Care About?” Australian Economic Review. Vol. 53 No. 2, pages 230-40.