[secretasiandan]

From the paper: For example, if one defines mobility based on relative positions in the income distribution – e.g., a child’s prospects of rising from the bottom to the top quintile – then intergenerational mobility has remained unchanged in recent decades. If instead one defines mobility based on the probability that a child from a low-income family (e.g., the bottom 20%) reaches a fixed upper income threshold (e.g., $100,000), then mobility has increased because of the increase in inequality. However, the increase in inequality has also magnified the difference in expected incomes between children born to low (e.g., bottom-quintile) vs. high (top-quintile) income families. In this sense, mobility has fallen because a child’s income depends more heavily on her parents’ position in the income distribution today than in the past.