Alberto Polo is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at New York University. He will present his latest paper using administrative tax-return data to shed new light on the degree of intergenerational economic mobility in Italy since the late 1990s. Provinces in Northern Italy, the richest area of the country, display upward mobility levels two to three times as large as those in Southern Italy. This regional variation is strongly correlated with local labor market conditions and with some indicators of school quality. The paper finds that mobility in Italy is larger than in the United States, but smaller than in Nordic European countries. However, when using alternative measures that account for the different level of income inequality across countries, Italy looks more in line with the United States.
The Stone Center hosts a seminar series focused on inequality. The purpose of this series is to give researchers opportunities to present new work to enable intensive discussion and feedback.