Absolute mobility in Great Britain Jo Blanden School of Economics, University of Surrey
Wednesday, 14 June 2017
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The Katz-Krueger statistic for Great Britain The British Cohort Study of those born in 1970 is our population of interest. – Observed as adults in 2004 at age 34. ‘Parents’ are observed in the 1972-1980 from the General Household Survey. We identify those between 32 and 36 with children born from 1968-1972.
We compare gross income from employment and self-employment, deflated using cpi to 2013 prices. – No consistent family income across the data – Means we can only properly consider men. The headline is that 83% of sons in this cohort have incomes higher than the median in their fathers’ generation. Strong mobility fits with what we know about wage growth over this period, but median wage growth has fallen post 2010.
Wednesday, 14 June 2017
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Wage growth in the UK and US
Source: Blanchflower and Machin 2014, CentrePiece Magazine Wednesday, 14 June 2017
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Regional comparisons – no great variation apart from London K&K stat North
83.4
Yorkshire and Humber
83.6
North West
78.4
East Midlands
77.3
West Midlands
82.4
East Anglia
82.8
Greater London
88.7
Rest of South East
81.5
South West
83.5
Wales
82.5
Scotland
79.9
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Checks
Median earned income for ‘fathers’ in 2013 £15,880, median earned income for sons is £25,167. Can be sense-checked against sample from administrative records, disadvantage is that this does not record self-employment data or presence of children. Only available from 1975. 88% KK when comparing within this sample (but only defined for the employed). 82.5% when comparing BCS sons with administrative data on fathers (again only defined for the employed)
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