Income Mobility, Income Inequality and Mortality in the U.S.

Abstract

We assess the magnitude of the association between intergenerational income mobility and US adult mortality by gender, age group, race/ethnicity and the causes of death. We use a data set from The Health Inequality Project and CDC mortality data at the county level. We find that under different model specifications the association between income mobility and adult mortality is strong, properly signed, and consistent with our hypotheses. If the association we find reflects a causal effect it would translate into shifts in life expectancy at age 40 of as much as 2.0-4.8 years among males and 0.1-2.0 among females, equivalent to 5.1-12.5 and 0.2-4.7 percent of the U.S. male and female life expectancy at age 40 respectively. On average, these effects are 1.5 to 2.5 times as large as those of income inequality and represent between 40 (males) and 25 (females) percent of the magnitude of an income shift from the lowest to the highest quartile of the U.S. income distribution.