Grusky and Pablo Mitnik, his co-author and colleague at the Center on Poverty and Inequality, use a new data set provided to them by the IRS to show that in the U.S., roughly half of parental income advantages are passed onto the next generation in the form of higher earnings. This proportion increases for the wealthier: For people whose parents are between the 50th and 90th percentiles of earners, about two-thirds of this parental edge is perpetuated. (It’s also worth noting that two-thirds of 90th-percentile earnings is substantially more money than two-thirds of 50th-percentile earnings.)
