Have or Have Not
Income Mobility of the Top One Percent
David Splinter & Jeff Larrimore
Federal Reserve Working Paper, April 2026
Abstract:
Circulation into and out of the top 1% is pronounced in the U.S. One third exit after a year and two-thirds exit after a decade. This mobility lowers top income shares when shifting from annual to multi-year income measures. Intragenerational mobility over two decades lowers recent top 1% fiscal income shares by over 10 percent. Two-decade mobility reduces top 0.1% shares by over 20 percent, top 0.01% shares by 30 percent, and top 0.001% shares by 40 percent. Effects of variability on wealth inequality are similar in magnitude, although more modest as a share of top wealth inequality.
How a Seemingly Innocuous and Intuitive Methodological Choice Confused a Generation of Research on Policy Responsiveness
Peter Enns
Sociological Science, May 2026
Abstract:
The finding that government policy is, "virtually unrelated to the desires of the low- and middle-income citizens" (Gilens 2005:789), is one of the most influential social science results of the last two decades. This article offers a new perspective on this finding. I show that the seemingly innocuous decision to restrict analyses to data where different income groups' policy support differs (i.e., a preference gap exists) introduced Simpson's paradox, leading to misleading conclusions about whose preferences policy reflects. The same concerns apply to analyses of responsiveness to men and women and to partisan groups. I also present evidence that other common approaches for evaluating policy responsiveness can produce equally misleading conclusions. These findings suggest a need to reconsider conventional wisdom about political influence. The conclusion offers methodological recommendations and discusses implications related to understanding social and economic inequality and support for populist candidates.
Has Generational Progress Stalled? Income Growth Over Five Generations of Americans
Kevin Corinth & Jeff Larrimore
Demography, April 2026, Pages 589-616
Abstract:
Whether each generation of Americans continues to economically surpass the previous one has recently been called into question. We construct a posttax, posttransfer income measure from 1963 to 2023 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement that allows us to consistently compare the economic well-being of five generations of Americans at ages 36-40. We find that Millennials had a real median household income that was 20% higher than that of the previous generation, a slowdown from the growth rate of the Silent Generation (36%) and Baby Boomers (26%), but similar to that of Generation X (16%). The slowdown for younger generations largely resulted from stalled growth in work hours among women. Progress for Millennials younger than 30 has also remained robust, though largely due to greater reliance on their parents. Additionally, lifetime income gains for younger generations far outweigh their higher educational costs.
Location-based Barriers to Mobility: Evidence from Elite High School Football Players
Mark Mitchell, Andrew Hanssen & Maxwell Mitchell
University of Chicago Working Paper, April 2026
Abstract:
A growing body of literature explores how neighborhoods influence the success of those who are raised in them. In this study, we contribute by examining the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and the success of elite high school football players. Elite high school players are a compelling group to study because, as individuals, they are i) well-aware that they possess very valuable human capital, ii) recognize that exploiting that capital requires attending college, and iii) invariably offered football scholarships, vastly reducing financial barriers to attending college. And yet some of these players fail to make it to a college campus. What explains such costly failures-what we term "derailments"? We develop a simple model in which an elite player develops two forms of human capital: athletic and academic. The model predicts an "investment effect" (low-mobility areas induce greater investment in athletics) and a "resource effect" (lower-resource areas render investment in academics less effective). Employing measures of local mobility from Chetty and Hendren (2018b) and measures of the local resource base, we find associations consistent with the predictions: Lower mobility counties produce more elite players than higher mobility counties, and among those elite players, derailment rates are significantly higher in the most poorly resourced areas (which also tend to have the lowest mobility).
Black Pioneers, Intermetropolitan Movers, and Housing Desegregation
Yana Kucheva & Richard Sander
Population Research and Policy Review, March 2026
Abstract:
During the first two-thirds of the 20th century, millions of Black rural Southerners moved to cities -- usually to the ghettoized urban cores of cities -- in the phenomenon known as the Great Migration. By 1960, however, the Black population was substantially urbanized and began to migrate in large numbers from one metropolitan area to another. This migration has been little studied. Using restricted census data and multinomial regression models, we find that intermetropolitan Black movers were far more likely than Black movers within metropolitan areas to settle in neighborhoods with majority White populations. Black intermetropolitan movers were less segregated from the White population compared to both intrametropolitan movers and non-movers across all the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, including those with the highest levels of residential segregation. These movers are thus important players in the story of late 20th century housing segregation, and may provide a valuable, and hitherto overlooked, barometer of how, over time and across different regions of the country, the openness of housing to entry by Black households changed and evolved.
Shift, Not Stasis: The Geography of Post-Civil Rights Racial Inequality
Robert Manduca
American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
National Black-white racial income disparities have changed little over the past 50 years. But this national stasis masks dramatic change at the local level. In 1969, inequality was greatest in the South, and lowest (although still substantial) in the industrial Northeast and Midwest. Today, the reverse is true: Black-white inequality is lower in the South than in the rest of the country, and highest in the Midwest and Northeast. The metropolitan characteristics associated with local inequality have also changed, in ways consistent with theoretical accounts of the post-Civil Rights racial regime. In the 1960s and '70s, inequality was greater in places with larger Black populations and smaller manufacturing industries, but today neither factor is significantly associated with local inequality. Meanwhile, residential segregation, educational inequality, and incarceration, which were not strongly associated with racial inequality in 1969, are significant predictors of disparities in the 21st century.
The policy adjacent: How affordable housing generates policy feedback among neighboring residents
Michael Hankinson, Asya Magazinnik & Melissa Sands
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
While scholars have documented feedback effects among a policy's direct winners and losers, less is known about whether such effects can occur among the indirectly affected -- "the policy adjacent." Using 458 geocoded housing developments built between two nearly identical statewide ballot propositions funding affordable housing in California, we show that policy generates feedback effects among neighboring residents in systematic ways. New, nearby affordable housing causes majority-homeowner blocks to increase their support for the housing bond, while majority-renter blocks decrease or do not change their support. We attribute the positive effect among majority-homeowner blocks to the housing's replacement of blight. In contrast, the lack of a positive effect among majority-renter blocks may be driven by the threat of gentrification. Policy implementation can win support for expansion among unexpected beneficiaries, while failing to do so even among the policy's presumed allies.
Beyond Hawks and Doves: Can inequality ease coordination?
Maria Bigoni, Mario Blazquez De Paz & Chloé Le Coq
Economic Theory, February 2026, Pages 93-111
Abstract:
It is often argued that inequality may worsen coordination failures as it exacerbates conflicts of interests, making it difficult to achieve an efficient outcome. This paper shows that this needs not to be always the case. In a context in which two interacting populations have conflicting interests, we introduce ex-ante inequality, by making one population stronger than the other. This reduces the cost of miscoordination for the weakest population, and at the same time it makes some equilibria more equitable than others, thus more focal and attractive for inequality-averse players. Hence, both social preferences and strategic risk considerations may ease coordination. We provide experimental support for this hypothesis, by considering an extended two-population Hawk-Dove game, where ex-ante inequality, number of pure-strategy equilibria, and cost of coordination vary across treatments. We find that subjects coordinate more often on the efficient outcomes in the treatment with ex-ante inequality.