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Life-cycle variations in the association between current and lifetime earnings: Evidence for German natives and guest workers

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  • Brenner, Jan
Abstract
In many economic models a central variable of interest is lifetime or permanent income which is not observed in survey data sets and typically proxied by annual income information. To assess the quality of such approximations, we use a unique source of lifetime earnings -- the German pension system -- and focus on two important issues that have been largely ignored in the existing literature. The first is how to deal with zero income observations in the analysis of women. The second is whether these approximations differ between natives and guest workers. For female earners, we find that estimates of the associations between current and lifetime income are highly sensitive to the treatment of zero earnings. The reason turns out to be the highly cyclical nature of the labor supply behavior of mothers. Furthermore, immigrants' income proxies are prone to significantly larger attenuation biases over the entire life-cycle. This result is explained by the larger share of annual income variance attributable to the transitory income component for immigrants. Averaging income over up to 15Â years alleviates the attenuation bias as well as the difference in biases between natives and guest workers.

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  • Brenner, Jan, 2010. "Life-cycle variations in the association between current and lifetime earnings: Evidence for German natives and guest workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 392-406, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:2:p:392-406
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    Cited by:

    1. Rolf Aaberge & Magne Mogstad, 2015. "Inequality in current and lifetime income," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 217-230, February.
    2. David Brady & Marco Giesselmann & Ulrich Kohler & Anke Radenacker, 2018. "How to measure and proxy permanent income: evidence from Germany and the U.S," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(3), pages 321-345, September.
    3. Brunello, Giorgio & Weber, Guglielmo & Weiss, Christoph T., 2012. "Books Are Forever: Early Life Conditions, Education and Lifetime Income," IZA Discussion Papers 6386, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Maurizio Bussolo & Daniele Checchi & Vito Peragine, 2023. "Long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity: Educated parents still matter," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(2), pages 277-323, June.
    5. Glaubitz, Rick & Harnack-Eber, Astrid & Wetter, Miriam, 2022. "The gender gap in lifetime earnings: The role of parenthood," Discussion Papers 2022/3, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    6. Black, Sandra E. & Devereux, Paul J., 2011. "Recent Developments in Intergenerational Mobility," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 16, pages 1487-1541, Elsevier.
    7. Flake, Regina, 2013. "Gender Differences in the Earnings Mobility of Migrants," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 58-79.
    8. Pierre Brochu & Till Gross & Christopher Worswick, 2020. "Temporary foreign workers and firms: Theory and Canadian evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(3), pages 871-915, August.
    9. Peter Siminski & Sin Hung (Timothy) Yu, 2022. "The Correlation of Wealth Between Parents and Children in Australia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 55(2), pages 195-214, June.
    10. Marco Bertoni & Giorgio Brunello, 2016. "Later-borns Don’t Give Up: The Temporary Effects of Birth Order on European Earnings," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(2), pages 449-470, April.
    11. Timm Bönke & Giacomo Corneo & Holger Lüthen, 2015. "Lifetime Earnings Inequality in Germany," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 171-208.
    12. Daniel D. Schnitzlein, 2016. "A New Look at Intergenerational Mobility in Germany Compared to the U.S," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(4), pages 650-667, December.
    13. Giorgio Brunello & Guglielmo Weber & Christoph T. Weiss, 2017. "Books are Forever: Early Life Conditions, Education and Lifetime Earnings in Europe," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(600), pages 271-296, March.
    14. Rick Glaubitz & Astrid Harnack-Eber & Miriam Wetter, 2022. "The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings: The Role of Parenthood," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2001, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    15. Regina Flake, 2011. "Gender Differences in the Intergenerational Earnings Mobility of Second-Generation Migrants," Ruhr Economic Papers 0283, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    16. repec:zbw:rwirep:0283 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Bhuller, Manudeep & Mogstad, Magne & Salvanes, Kjell G., 2011. "Life-Cycle Bias and the Returns to Schooling in Current and Lifetime Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 5788, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Iryna Kyzyma & Olaf Groh-Samberg, 2020. "Estimation of intergenerational mobility in small samples: evidence from German survey data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(2), pages 621-643, September.
    19. Céline Lecavelier des Etangs-Levallois, 2017. "Overview of intergenerational earnings mobility in Germany," THEMA Working Papers 2017-11, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    20. Soobin Kim, 2017. "Intergenerational mobility in Korea," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-18, December.
    21. Coban, Mustafa & Sauerhammer, Sarah, 2017. "Transmission channels of intergenerational income mobility: Empirical evidence from Germany and the Unites States," Discussion Paper Series 138, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Chair of Economic Order and Social Policy.
    22. Marco Bertoni & Giorgio Brunello & Lorenzo Cappellari, 2020. "Who benefits from privileged peers? Evidence from siblings in schools," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(7), pages 893-916, November.
    23. Flake, Regina, 2011. "Gender Differences in the Intergenerational Earnings Mobility of Second-Generation Migrants," Ruhr Economic Papers 283, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    24. Chau, Tak Wai, 2012. "Intergenerational income mobility revisited: Estimation with an income dynamic model with heterogeneous age profile," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 770-773.
    25. Bavaro, Michele, 2018. "Intergenerational mobility of status with multiple dimensions in Germany and the United Kingdom," ISER Working Paper Series 2018-09, Institute for Social and Economic Research.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Generalized errors-in-variables model Life-cycle bias Lifetime income Guest workers;

    JEL classification:

    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General
    • C50 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - General
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

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