The Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility of Canadian Men

Book excerpt: Our objective is to obtain an accurate estimate of the degree of intergenerational income mobility in Canada. We use income tax information on about 400,000 father-son pairs, and find intergenerational earnings elasticities to be about 0.2. Earnings mobility tends to be slightly greater than income mobility, but non-parametric techniques uncover significant non-linearities in both of these relationships. Intergenerational earnings mobility is greater at the lower end of the income distribution than at the upper end, and displays an inverted V-shape elsewhere. Intergenerational income mobility follows roughly the same pattern, but is much lower at the very top of the income distribution.