Time is money- What drives income mobility over time?

Presenter: Celine Thevenot, OECD

Taking into account income trajectories in social monitoring is key to properly design policy making. While there is no ideal level of income mobility to be targeted at national level, international comparisons are with no doubt a channel to understand why some countries do better than others in ensuring stable income trajectories. In our paper, we gather longitudinal income data for an extensive set of countries and compare income mobility (using CNEF and EU-SILC data, and National longitudinal sources). We dedicate special attention to the measurement of income changes during the economic crisis, and try to isolate whether income losses have been more equally shared in some countries than others. For example, losses were more concentrated among few individuals in southern European countries, and more equally shared in Denmark, Great Britain or the United States. We then compare recent patterns of income changes with those measured 10 or 20 years ago. Preliminary results tend to suggest that there is slightly less upward mobility than before. Last, we relate income changes to life- and labour market events, such as child birth, divorce, job loss and job take-up. In the case of job loss, our results isolate the cushioning role of income support, of other adult earnings in the household. Our results highlight the different forms of employment (temporary, part-time, self-employment) and the role of the national income support designs in ensuring resilient income trajectories throughout the time.