Income Mobility in California Across Generations
The evidence in this report suggests that Californian children have higher rates of income mobility because of their parents’ and their own characteristics, not because growing up in California results in more mobility. On average, growing up in California results in somewhat lower adult earnings for children compared to living elsewhere in the United States. . . According to the Chetty and Hendren estimates, had these children grown up somewhere else, they would have experienced slightly greater upward income mobility. . . While growing up in California results in lower future earnings for low–income children on average, there is a great deal of variation in these outcomes at a local level. Within California, growing up in a particular county can increase or decrease a child’s future annual income by a couple of thousand dollars.