| Abstract: | This paper aims to obtain an accurate estimate of China's intergenerational income mobility and to present evidence on its distributional pattern. Using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) over the period 1989–2009, I find that China is less mobile than most developed countries. Then, I employ five different approaches to investigate the distributional pattern of China's intergenerational mobility across income levels. The results suggest that poor families have relatively high mobility, indicating opportunities for the poor children to escape poverty. Finally, I show that while wealthy fathers are likely to pass on their favorable economic status to their sons, rich sons come from a very wide range of family economic backgrounds. |
