Search Results
Working Paper
The Evolution of U.S. Educational Mobility over the 20th Century and the Role of Public Education
We construct two new large-scale datasets to measure relative and upward educational mobility by sex, race, class, and childhood county of residence for cohorts born in 1910–1919 and 1982–1997. We show that both relative and upward educational mobility rose over the 20th century, with historically disadvantaged groups experiencing the largest gains. We also document substantial geographic convergence over the 20th century: both within and across regions, where children live matters much less for their educational mobility today than it did at midcentury. Using a state-border design, we ...