Econintersect: A recent Chicago Fed study concludes:
…. if future generations of white and black Americans experience the same rates of intergenerational mobility as these cohorts, we should expect to see that blacks on average would not make any relative progress. While these results are provocative, they stand in contrast to other epochs in which blacks have made steady progress in reducing racial differentials.
In recent decades, blacks have experienced substantially less upward mobility and substantially more downward mobility from one generation to the next than whites. These results are shown to be highly robust to a variety of measurement issues. The author examines rates of intergenerational mobility by race and asks whether such racial differences in the U.S. are likely to be eliminated and, if so, how long it might take.
[click on image to read full study]
Source: http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/economic_perspectives/2014/1Q2014_part1_mazumder.pdf
