The intergenerational elasticity (IGE) has been assumed to refer to the expectation of children’s income when in fact it pertains to the geometric mean of children’s income. We show that mobility analyses based on the conventional IGE have been widely misinterpreted, are subject to selection bias, and cannot disentangle the different channels for transmitting economic status across generations. The solution to these problems—estimating the IGE of expected income or earnings—returns the field to what it has long meant to estimate. Under this approach, intergenerational persistence is found to be substantially higher, thus raising the possibility that the field’s stock results are misleading.

中文翻译：

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什么的代际弹性？重新定义经济流动性衡量标准的案例

代际弹性 (IGE) 被假定为指儿童收入的预期，而实际上它与儿童收入的几何平均值有关。我们表明，基于传统 IGE 的流动性分析被广泛误解，受到选择偏差的影响，并且无法解开跨代传递经济地位的不同渠道。这些问题的解决方案——估计预期收入或收益的 IGE——使该领域回归到它长期以来的意图。在这种方法下，发现代际持久性要高得多，从而增加了该领域股票结果具有误导性的可能性。