>What strikes me about these statistics is the degree to which they
>confirm income mobility (in both directions). I don't think anyone
>believes that there is no correlation between parental income and
>the income of the next generation. The claim is that in America
>it is not as high as it is elsewhere. This study shows that 31 percent
>(100-40-29) of people born into the bottom quartile end up in the
>top half. And conversely that 42 percent of people born into the
>top quartile end up in the bottom half. That seems like an awful
>lot of mobility to me. If it were completely random the numbers should
>be 50 percent. 31 and 42 percent are a lot closer to 50 than they are
>to 0 which is what it would be if there we no income mobility.
Is the glass one-third full, or two-thirds empty?
>It seems odd that the article doesn't mention the equivalent
>figures in Europe or the UK considering it was published in the F.T.
>I would be that they are a lot lower.
No, they're not. What comparative evidence there is is that U.S. income mobility isn't that different from Western Europe's.
Doug