Income mobility, can someone help me with this?

[PeeWeeTheMadman]

I have written an article, critizing this piece of work:

http://www.dallasfed.org/fed/annual/1999p/ar95.html

As I have understood this survey, they have included students, and high school kids over 15 in it. And they have included them regardless of whether the have part time job or not. I have critized it here:

http://www.utilitarianpolitics.com/readarticle.php?articlechoice=2

Is there someone here that know if that survey really included teenagers that doesn`t work? I understood it so, but want to make it clear so I don`t make an ass of myself.

Does anyone here know this survey in more detail? Is the survey they use to "prove" that income mobility in the US is huge.

[idlisambar]

1. not sure about the survey, but...

take a look at this article from Businessweek that gives a different view and cites some other studies on the subject:

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_48/b3...

An excerpt...

Last year, Wichita State University sociology professor David W. Wright and two colleagues updated a classic 1978 study that looked at how sons fared according to the social and economic class of their fathers. Defining class by a mix of education, income, and occupation, they found that sons from the bottom three-quarters of the socioeconomic scale were less likely to move up in the 1990s than in the 1960s. Just 10% of sons whose fathers were in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter by 1998, the authors found. By contrast, 23% of lower-class sons had done so by 1973, according to the earlier study. Similarly, only 51% of sons whose fathers belonged to the second-highest quarter equaled or surpassed the economic standing of their parents in the 1990s. In the 1960s, 63% did.