title: The implications of selective attrition for estimates of intergenerational elasticity of family income.
abstract: Numerous studies have estimated a high intergenerational correlation in economic status. Such studies do not typically attend to potential biases that may arise due to survey attrition. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics - the data source most commonly used in prior studies - we demonstrate that attrition is particularly high for low-income adult children with low-income parents and particularly low for high-income adult children with high-income parents. Because of this pattern of attrition, intergenerational upward mobility has been overstated for low-income families and downward mobility has been understated for high-income families. The bias among low-income families is greater than the bias among high-income families implying that intergenerational elasticity in family income is higher than previous estimates with the Panel Study of Income Dynamics would suggest.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Social Research, School of Public Policy, and Department of Economics, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.
authors.forename: Robert F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Schoeni
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125.
authors.forename: Emily E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Wiemers
keywords: attrition; family income; intergenerational transmission