Mobility Measures

Geographic mobility is a celebrated feature of American life. Deciding where to live is seen not only as a key personal freedom, but also a means of economic advancement. Millions of Americans move each year over great distances. But while this right to travel is safeguarded by the Constitution, these mobility decisions are not entirely free. In terms of moving long distances, employment and family reasons are central, and a regime of employment and family law “mobility measures” play a significant role in regulating why and how we move. This Article first sets forth this new framework of “mobility measures,” which are constituted by employment law sorting (moving across employers and space for employment purposes) and family law clustering (moving with a legally defined portable family unit). These mobility measures not only enable and facilitate long-distance moves, including with subsidies to the tune of billions of dollars a year, but they motivate these moves to take a particular form: to move for employment purposes, only taking our nuclear family with us. In this way, we are encouraged by the law to move, yet the law prevents us from mitigating the disruption caused by the move. So while mobility has its benefits, this Article argues that it has underappreciated costs. Long-distance moves destroy place-specific investments with our closest supporters that are crucial for everyday functions, as well as economic productivity. These relationship and economic costs harm all long-distance movers, but weigh particularly heavily on one group — women. This toxic combination of employment sorting and family clustering makes mobility more problematic than it needs to be. This Article closes by offering new ways of substantially altering employment sorting and family clustering to optimize the balance between the two and reap more benefits from mobility with fewer costs. These reforms would soften sorting while expanding clustering, and at the same time encourage certain forms of mobility (particularly to cities) that would permit a more optimal combination of sorting and clustering

Validating U.S. Earnings Mobility Measures

Earnings mobility has been studied at both the macro level (the amount of mobility in an economy) and the micro level (the correlates of individuals’ income changes). While measurement error is recognized as potentially important at both these levels, very little is known about the degree to which earnings mobility estimates are affected by measurement error. We compare micro and macro earnings mobility estimates for the U.S. during the 1990s using both survey-based earnings and administrative-based earnings. We find that measurement error in survey-based earnings has little qualitative effect on mobility estimates, but often has a large quantitative effect

Measuring Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity

This paper explores the link between the measurement of intergenerational mobility and the notion of equality of opportunity. We show how recently proposed theories of equality of opportunity can be meaningfully adapted to the intergenerational context. This throws a new light on the interpretation of existing mobility measures: these may be interesting to measure mobility as movement, but they are inadequate to capture the notion of equality of opportunity. We propose some new mobility measures, which start from the idea that the intergenerational transition matrix gives useful information about the opportunity sets of the children of different social classes. These measures are used in an empirical illustration to evaluate the degree of inequality of opportunity in the US, Great Britain and Italy.

Measuring intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity.

This paper explores the link between the measurement of intergenerational mobility and the notion of equality of opportunity. We show how recently proposed theories of equality of opportunity can be meaningfully adapted to the intergenerational context. This throws a new light on the interpretation of existing mobility measures: these may be interesting to measure mobility as movement, but they are inadequate to capture the notion of equality of opportunity. We propose some new mobility measures, which start from the idea that the intergenerational transition matrix gives useful information about the opportunity sets of the children of different social classes. These measures are used in an empirical illustration to evaluate the degree of inequality of opportunity in the US, Great Britain and Italy.

Measuring Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity

This paper explores the link between the measurement of intergenerational mobility and the notion of equality of opportunity. We show how recently proposed theories of equality of opportunity can be meaningfully adapted to the intergenerational context. This throws a new light on the interpretation of existing mobility measures: these may be interesting to measure mobility as movement, but they are inadequate to capture the notion of equality of opportunity. We propose some new mobility measures, which start from the idea that the intergenerational transition matrix gives useful information about the opportunity sets of the children of different social classes. These measures are used in an empirical illustration to evaluate the degree of inequality of opportunity in the US, Great Britain and Italy.

Mobility as movement: A measuring proposal based on transition matrices

In this note we introduce a family of functions that various theoretical results have revealed as useful mobility measures. These functions have enabled us to circumvent an impossibility result obtained by Shorrocks (1978), by adapting one of his axioms to the context of mobility as movement. A particular case belonging to this family is the Bartholomew index, which is widely used in the empirical literature.

Optimization of urban mobility measures to achieve win-win strategies

European cities are essential in the development of Europe as they constitute the living environment of more than 60% of the population in the European Union and are drivers of the European economy – just under 85% of the EU’s gross domestic product is produced in urban areas (EC, 2007a). The car has been one of the main factors of development during the 20th century, but it is at the same time the origin of the key problems cities have to face: traffic increase. This has resulted in chronic congestion with many adverse consequences such as air pollution and noise. This loss of environmental quality is one of the reasons for urban sprawl in European cities during recent decades. But this urban sprawl at the same time worsens the environmental conditions. We must return to the dense city, but clean and competitive, and this implies reducing car use yet provides quality transport alternatives sufficient to recover and maintain the competitiveness of cities (EC, 2007a). Consequently, European cities need to establish an urban transport strategy which helps reduce their environmental problems –mainly emissions and noise – but without decreasing their trip attraction. This aspect is very important because a loss of trip attraction would result in an increase of people moving to more disperse areas, contributing towards worsening the current situation. This thesis is an attempt to contribute solutions to this problem in two ways: 1) The first is to analyze the complementarity and possible synergies of several urban transport measures aimed at improving a modal split to a more sustainable means of transport. This analysis will focus on the three aspects already mentioned: emissions, noise and attractiveness or competitiveness. 2) Once possible synergies and complementarities have been analyzed, the second objective is to propose the best combination of these measures, in terms of level of implementation, to achieve the maximum benefit with respect to the three aspects previously established: emissions, noise and attractiveness or competitiveness. Therefore, within the wide range of measures enhancing sustainable urban transport, three of them have been be selected in this thesis to establish a methodology for achieving these objectives. The analysis will be based on the region of Madrid, which is also the case study selected for this research. Las ciudades europeas son piezas fundamentales para el desarrollo europeo, ya que son el lugar de residencia de más del 60% de la población de la unión europea así como los motores de su economía – casi el 85% del PIB europeo se produce en áreas urbanas (EC, 2007a). El coche ha sido uno de los principales motores de desarrollo de las ciudades durante el siglo XX, pero se ha terminado por convertir a su vez en uno de los principales problemas con los que tiene que lidiar las ciudades: el aumento del tráfico. Esto ha derivado en unos niveles crónicos de congestión, con multitud de efectos adversos, entre los que cabe destacar la contaminación del aire y el ruido. Esta pérdida de calidad ambiental es una de las razones que ha propiciado la dispersión urbana que han experimentado las ciudades europeas en las últimas décadas. Pero esta dispersión urbana a su vez contribuye a empeorar las condiciones ambientales de las ciudades. Debemos retornar a la ciudad densa, pero limpia y competitiva, y esto implica reducir el uso del coche, pero proporcionando alternativas de transporte que permitan recuperar y mantener la competitividad de las ciudades (EC, 2007a). Por lo tanto, las ciudades europeas necesitan encontrar una estrategia de transporte urbano que ayude a reducir sus problemas medio ambientales – principalmente ruido y emisiones – pero sin hacerlas perder atractividad o competitividad. Este aspecto tiene gran importancia porque una pérdida de la misma se traduciría en un aumento de dispersión de la población hacia áreas periféricas, contribuyendo a empeorar la situación actual. Esta tesis contribuye a solucionar este problema de dos maneras: 1) La primera, analizando la complementariedad y posibles sinergias de diferentes medidas de transporte urbano orientadas a promover un reparto modal hacia modos más sostenibles. Este análisis se centrará en los tres aspectos anteriormente citados: emisiones, ruido y atractividad o competitividad. 2) Una vez las posibles sinergias y complementariedades se han analizado, el segundo objetivo es proponer la mejor combinación de estas medidas – en términos de grado de aplicación - para lograr el máximo beneficio en lo que respecta a los tres objetivos previamente establecidos. Para ello, en esta tesis se han seleccionado una serie de medidas que permitan establecer una metodología para alcanzar estos objetivos previamente definidos. El análisis se centra en la ciudad de Madrid y su área metropolitana, la cual se ha escogido como caso de estudio para realizar esta investigación