Who gets ahead? Cross-country evidence on intragenerational income mobility | LSE III Event

Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series at LSE 26 May 2026 Speaker: Javier Terrero Dávila, Economist, OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Income mobility is often invoked as a counterweight to slow growth and rising inequality, but cross-country comparisons yield contrasting pictures depending on the metric used and where individuals are located in the income distribution. Using harmonised administrative data from Austria, Belgium, Estonia and Spain, we show that top incomes are highly persistent everywhere, while countries with higher inequality exhibit stronger rank–rank persistence because inequality dampens the translation of income growth into rank advancement. Mobility outcomes also vary by demographic group and starting position, with younger people generally faring better at the bottom of the distribution, women experiencing less upward mobility than men, and individuals with lower educational attainment showing weaker outcomes throughout the distribution.