Slow
Motion: Earnings Mobility
of Young Workers in the 1970s and 1980s
Greg
J. Duncan, Johanne Boisjoly, and Timothy Smeeding
Abstract
This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate cohort changes in
earnings trajectories. Among male workers turning 21 before 1980,
we find that more than six in ten (60%) of all male workers and
seven in ten (71%) of college-educated male workers attained earnings
levels by age 30 that were at least twice the poverty line. These
figures are considerably higher than the corresponding 42% and 56%
fractions of workers turning 21 between 1968 and 1980. Relatively
few members of the overlapping groups of blacks, men with less schooling,
and men from low-SES family backgrounds succeeded in crossing the
twice-poverty threshold. When compared with older cohorts, recent
cohorts from all demographic subgroups we examined took longer to
reach the three earnings thresholds used in our analysis.
Greg J. Duncan,
School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University Johanne Boisjoly, Department
of Sociology, University of Quebec at Rimouski Timothy Smeeding, Maxwell School
of Public Affairs, Syracuse University
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