BURNS, FRANCES ANN
'Like Father, Like Son' Holds True for Income
Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1991, Part D; Page 2; Column 5
Cohort(s): Older Men, Young Men
ID Number: 320
Publisher: Los Angeles Times

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

There's a simple way to get a leg up toward a good lifetime income -- be the son of a high-income father. A Princeton University economist who studied 876 pairs of fathers and sons found that sons of fathers in low-income brackets tend to end up in the same bracket and vice versa. David Zimmerman, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton, said his study shows "that there is much less mobility in the United States economy than had previously been believed." Zimmerman used the National Longitudinal Survey, a database assembled at Ohio State University that tracked two groups of older and younger men for 15 years. He found 876 father-son pairs. Looking at information on income and job type, Zimmerman found that 40% of the sons whose fathers were in the bottom 25% in income in 1965 were in the same quartile themselves in 1980 and 69% were in the lower half. Only 12% had risen to the top 25%.

BURNS, FRANCES ANN
Income Study Says, Like Father, Like Son
Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1991, Part A; Page 34; Column 1
Cohort(s): Older Men, Young Men
ID Number: 321
Publisher: Los Angeles Times

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

There's a simple way to get a leg up toward a good lifetime income -- be the son of a high-income father. A Princeton University economist who studied 876 pairs of fathers and sons found that sons of fathers in low-income brackets tend to end up in the same bracket, and vice versa. David Zimmerman, a lecturer and doctoral candidate at Princeton, used the National Longitudinal Survey, a database assembled at Ohio State University that tracked two groups of older and younger men for 15 years. He found 876 father-son pairs. Looking at information on income and job type, Zimmerman found that 40% of the sons whose fathers were in the bottom 25% in income in 1965 were in the same bracket themselves in 1980 and 69% were in the lower half. Only 12% had risen to the top 25%. At the same time, 41% of the sons with fathers in the top 25% in income were in that bracket 15 years later and 9% were in the lowest income group. Although his sample included only working people, Zimmerman suggested that his findings may indicate that welfare is not the trap some people have thought, breeding dependence across generations. What we may be seeing when the children of parents on welfare go on welfare themselves is "the intergenerational transmission of poverty," he said.

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