> On 10/24/2011 11:46 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> On Oct 24, 2011, at 9:57 AM, Bryan Atinsky wrote:
>>
>>> I was just wondering who has good data on generational perpetuity of wealth.
>>
>> It helps a lot, but there's no guarantee. Actually, membership in the 1% (by income, not wealth) is quite volatile. Most people have short stays at the top, then slip back a few percentiles.
>
> Of course, you could also define top 1% by wealth instead of income. There would be much more stickiness, almost by definition.
Doug, could you help me understand the basis of answering a question about the "[inter-]generational perpetuity of wealth" on the basis of *income rather than wealth*? It seems to me that "stickiness" isn't a variable: the question seems to ask pretty straightforwardly about the "stickiness of wealth" - which seems like a pretty important trajectory of capital accumulation - rather than the "stickiness of income opportunity" (although the latter obviously also lends itself to interesting analysis).