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The Sins of the Fathers: Intergenerational Income Mobility in C hina
Author(s) -
Yuan Weici
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/roiw.12222
Subject(s) - economics , poverty , panel study of income dynamics , panel data , labour economics , demographic economics , economic growth , econometrics
This paper aims to obtain an accurate estimate of C hina's intergenerational income mobility and to present evidence on its distributional pattern. Using panel data from the C hina H ealth and N utrition S urvey ( CHNS ) over the period 1989–2009, I find that C hina is less mobile than most developed countries. Then, I employ five different approaches to investigate the distributional pattern of C hina's intergenerational mobility across income levels. The results suggest that poor families have relatively high mobility, indicating opportunities for the poor children to escape poverty. Finally, I show that while wealthy fathers are likely to pass on their favorable economic status to their sons, rich sons come from a very wide range of family economic backgrounds.