In the Name of the Father: Marriage and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States, 1850-1930

Abstract

This paper provides a new perspective on intergenerational mobility in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We develop a new methodology based on synthetic cohorts of individuals with the same first name. This methodology allows to calculate intergenerational elasticities not only between fathers and sons, but also between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law, something that is typically not possible with historical data. Thus, the paper sheds light on the role of marriage in the intergenerational transmission of economic status from a historical perspective. We find that the father-son correlation in economic status grows throughout the sample period. The trend in father/son-in-law correlation is broadly similar, but it rises more markedly in the latter part of the 19th Century, and falls below the father/son correlation toward the end of the sample period. We argue that most of the increase in the intergenerational elasticity estimate in the early part of the 20th Century can be accounted for by the vast regional disparities in economic development. Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility, Marriage, Assortative Mating