The Evolution of U.S. Educational Mobility over the 20th Century and the Role of Public Education
January 12, 2026
Summary
Using two new large-scale linked datasets, the authors of this working paper examine the evolution of intergenerational educational mobility in the United States during the 20th century and the role that investments in public education have played in shaping these long-run trends.
View PaperWorking Paper 2026-1a
Abstract: We construct two large-scale datasets and use a rank-rank framework to describe relative and upward educational mobility by childhood county for U.S. cohorts born in 1910–19 and 1982–97. After validating our estimates against nationally representative surveys, we document increases in relative and upward educational mobility over the 20th century that mask substantial geographic convergence. Today, where children grow up matters less than it did historically. Using a state-border design, we show that increasing public spending on K-12 and postsecondary education raised upward educational mobility over the 20th century but had little effect on the persistence of educational advantage.
JEL classification: J62, I24, I28, N32
Key words: education, inequality, intergenerational mobility
https://doi.org/10.29338/wp2026-01
Martha J. Bailey is a professor of economics and director of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. A.R. Shariq Mohammed is an assistant professor of economics at Northeastern University. Paul Mohnen is a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
For helpful comments, the authors thank Dan Aaronson, Sandy Black, Marcus Casey, Dan Fetter, Sasha Indarte, Bhash Mazumder, Matt Staiger, Bryan Stuart, and participants at the AEA, Atlanta Fed, Cliometrics, EHA, Equitable Growth, NBER Development of the American Economy, NBER Summer Institute, RNIM, SOLE, Philadelphia Fed, UCLA, and University of Pennsylvania. They also thank Alex Coblin, Jordan Cammarota, Kelsey Figone, Deniz Gorgulu, David Lee, Avinash Reddy, Joaquín Serrano, Eric Wang, and Mengying Zhang for excellent research assistance. They thank Jonathan Rothbaum and Hui Ren Tan for sharing their estimates, and James Feigenbaum for sharing the linked Iowa-1940 Census data. They thank Caleb Floyd for guidance with the disclosure process. The LIFE-M project was generously supported by the National Science Foundation (SMA 1539228), the National Institute on Aging (R21 AG05691201), the University of Michigan Population Studies Center Small Grants (R24 HD041028), the Michigan Center for the Demography of Aging (MiCDA, P30 AG012846-21), the University of Michigan Associate Professor Fund, the Michigan Institute on Research and Teaching in Economics (MITRE), the Russell Sage Foundation (1911-19560), and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. They gratefully acknowledge the use of the Population Studies Center’s services and facilities at the University of Michigan (P2CHD041028) and the California Center for Population Research at UCLA (P2CHD041022). The Census Bureau has reviewed this data product to ensure appropriate access, use, and protection against disclosure of the confidential source data. This research was performed at a Federal Statistical Research Data Center under FSRDC Project Number 2548 (CBDRB-FY24-0379, CBDRB-FY25-12440). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Federal Reserve System, or the Census Bureau. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Federal Reserve System, or the US Census Bureau.
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