Inequality and income mobility: the science and politics of the ‘Grat Gatsby’ curve
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22325/fes/res.2023.143Keywords:
relative income mobility, inequality and income mobility, Great Gatsby Curve, Social Science and PoliticsAbstract
The paper tries to present a case of ‘deformation’ in social research produced by its ‘capture’ by politics. Research on income and earnings mobility did follow, although with some retard, a pattern of development very similar to the studies in social mobility had followed before; they went g rowing without arriving to categorical formulations of empirical regularities. But it happened that, when some economists thought to have uncover something like such a regularity –more inequality, less relative income mobility-, it was kidnapped by politics, whose trumpets made it famous under the label ‘Great Gatsby curve’ as social ‘law’ with important political consequences. At its turn, the popularity obtained though media and politics, helped reinforce the critical and empirical research on the topic.
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