Intergenerational earnings mobility in Taiwan: 1990–2010

In this paper, we study the intergenerational earnings mobility between fathers and sons in Taiwan. We apply the two-sample approach developed by Björklund and Jäntti (Am Econ Rev 87(5):1009–1018, 1997) and find that the intergenerational earnings elasticity in Taiwan was around 0.4–0.5 in both the early 1990s and the late 2000s. We also estimate the intergenerational rank association in earnings to have been around 0.3 in both periods. Intergenerational earnings mobility in Taiwan is similar to that in less mobile countries such as the USA, and it appears to remain stable during a period of rapid economic development.