The Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility of Canadian Men: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Data

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.