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Rising inequality and declining mobility in the Forbes 400

2023; Elsevier BV; Volume: 230; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111235

1873-7374

Ricardo T. Fernholz, Kara Hagler,

Income, Poverty, and Inequality

We examine the joint evolution of inequality and mobility from 1985–2020 using a novel data set of intergenerational family wealth dynamics constructed from the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. In recent decades, the concentration of wealth at the very top of the distribution has risen in the U.S. Over this same period, we show that mobility among the wealthiest American family dynasties has declined, with mobility measured either as family wealth-rank correlations over one-year and five-year periods or as the number of new entrants at the top of the distribution.