Intergenerational income mobility in England and the importance of education

The first looks at the average income rank of children on Free School Meals (which indicates that their parents are on means-tested benefits and roughly identifies the children from the 12.5% of families with the lowest incomes), and the second focuses on bottom to top mobility by looking at the proportion of children on FSM who make it to the top 20% of the income distribution. [...] A child with parents in the bottom 12% of income is expected to end up at the 39th percentile of the child income distribution in Italy, and at the 35th percentile in the US. [...] In the Appendix we also show the results for Pa(Q5|FSM), the proportion of children on FSM who grew up in area a and make it to the top 20% of the national income distribution at age 28. [...] London is even more of an outlier in this measure of mobility with virtually London boroughs in the top quintile in terms of the proportion of FSM children reaching the top 20% of the income distribution. [...] A3 Description of correlates We use the following area characteristics from the 2001 population census in England: • Unemployment: the share of the economically active population between the ages of 16 and 74 who were looking for work in the wek preceding the census.