Alright some interesting data here... haven't analayzed it's accuracy, as I wanted to go through this quickl so just the data.

I suppose the best to point out at the start  that...

The best country of the Nordic countries when it comes to Elasticity, and the only one better in a statistically significant way?   Denmark.  Which (un)coindentally happens to be the most "Free Market" of the Nordic Countries.   They have a huge social saftey net, but are pretty largely deregulated.

It's RIGHT below the US in the "Economic Freedom" index.

Denmark being an interesting country because of that, they're very buisness friendly, have a social saftey net, and have a pretty interchangeable workforce, so the average welfare recipient tends to receive benefits for less then one year, and most of the population actually expects to be laid off or be between jobs for a short period of time.

Though now the breakdowns your looking for... rounded to the nearest percent not evened out so the other way likely won't fully add up.

In the Lowest Quintile Fathers breakdown for son earnings? 

40%/25%/17%/10%/8%. 

Pretty bad... not really that awful though considering the problems listed above.  35% chance to not be poor.  Means a lot of people aren't following the above.  Don't know where the article got 42%.  There data clearly says .400%.  So it's as close to 40% as possible, and would be 39% if I tried to make both sides add up.  (The horizontel = 100% like the vertical does.)

Second lowest?

20%/26%/20%/18%/16%

Over a 50% chance to not be poor if you started off in the secondary "poor" class

That's suddenly a whole hell of a lot better and pretty evenly distributed.

The Middle

18%/21%/25%/20%/16%

Hard to get more evenly distributed then this.

Lower Rich

14%/17%/21/23/25

A little less then a coinflip to stay rich.

Richest

9%/11%/15%/25%/25%.

When your the richest it seems somewhat hard to blow all that money, probably due to getting investments and such transfered over to you giving you instant income.   Still, 50% of the Children of the Richest people in the US, no longer are rich by the time they are adults.  That's a pretty big difference to me anyway.

So, everything seems pretty fine, except for that bottom quintile, which is largely due to the problems previously listed.... in general, unlike a lot of other countries, in the US, those on welfare seem to be a much higher % of "Chronic Welfare families".

We need a way to combat this.

I know it's a bit stupid to ask this now, but what is the exact thing being measured here? Yearly income at the age of 18 or something to that effect? I'd need to know if I'm going to decide how useful it is here.

I'm actually rather impressed if this is a reliable statistic, though. I thought the situation was significantly worse in the US. At least for the top quintile. I expected way more than 25% to maintain their position.

The fact that Denmark is better than the other Scandinavian countries is interesting, as well. From how you describe it, it only seems to be half for the general right-wing economic argument, though. Unless I'm reading it wrong, the huge social safety net seems to be something that's actually aiding the way their system works.

Thanks for looking this up, by the way.

Guess How her father made is billions , he was flying in a plane in north west Australia when he noticed the compass going haywire decided it must be a massive amount of iron deposits to affect it so bad and the rest is history , he dies a billionaire , but Gena gets two paydays as she also inherits the chinese construction boom ,taking her from rich to worlds richest women .

Seems to be.   Nobody in the US though is really going to be for "Greatly increase the saftey social net mostly by vastly increasing taxes on the middle class and poor."

Also worth noting by the way.... which isn't really mentioned... the US has a LOT more wealth then your average country... and way more super billionaires and such.   There are far fewer Bill Gates in Denmark then there are the US.    It's hard to lose Bill Gates money.

As for what it's measuring.   Basically Fathers earnings were measured in 1978, and compaired with their sons incomes between 1995-2001.

It's problematic that they only used Fatehrs and not household income, but, IRS numbers using household info come up with similar numbers, and are a bit more flattering towards US Economic mobility if I remember correctly.

They did a report with Daughters as well, but it's not as interesting... Daughters being pretty much all right by each other and waaaaay more mobile then sons... and actually absolutely fascinating.

Suggesting there is some social problem essentially with the boys of the poorest parents, espiecally those on welfare.

For example the lowest quintile for Daughters in the US, had their salary earnings work like this.

26/21/25/18/10

Second lowest

And very intrestingly, the richset women seem to have a huge chance for dropping.

22/12/13/22/31

Nearly 1/4th of rich women fall into the lowest level of poverty.  If your born in the highest quintile, you are MORE likely to be in the lowest level of poverty then if you were born poor, middle class or "Low rich"

Infact, daughters who end up extreme poverty go like this

26/17/16/19/22

If your born Rich and are a woman, you are MORE likely to be in the poorest quintile then if born somewhat poor or Middle class.    If I had to guess, I would say this is due to the Rich girls not being trained to follow in their fathers footsteps and being sheltered from the world.  

As for why the poorest women are so bad off?   I'd guess teen pregnancy honestly.  Outside that number, being poorer as a kid actually increases a womans chance of NOT being poor when they are adults.

Or did.  Honestly it's probably all just confounded due to the rise of women in the workplace.   Who knows what the numbers would be starting with women in the 90's.

That methodology does seem to leave room for a host of errors. A lot of the children could still be studying, given the time period, and could still be relying on their parents to some extent. I'm not sure how much that constitutes "income". I guess you can't really do anything much better, though. If they were very specific with what they measure and what they classify it as, they probably wouldn't come up with anything presentable that you can really conclude anything from.

Also, the statistics for the daughters are even more surprising. For the lowest quintile, given what I'd guess is a significant margin of error, it's more or less equally probable for them to end up in any of the first four quintiles.It's harder to make a general statement about the top quintile, but it also seems fairly decent, really.

Nah, This study was of children born between 1957 and 1964.

So the childs age in 1975 would be 11-18.  Meaning in 1995 the youngest would be 31, and the oldest would be 48.

Furthermore they use a formula to adjust the salaries of the fathers and children so they account for boths age effecting their salaries.

Keep in mind as well, this is one of the studies that shows inequality at it's worst.

Looks like they've adjusted for more or less everything then. Of course, I bet there's still a lot of holes to poke in this if I tried desperately, but I suppose that would be taking it too far.

If this study is showing more lack of mobility than most, though, do studies generally have statistically insignificant differences in terms of how likely someone is to end up being poor as an adult when he or she is born poor? Because this was awfully close to that in some parts already.

You must really admire her.

And what if that lucky break never comes your way? What if he had never quite worked himself around to baked carbon wire? The end result is the same. Trying is more important than doing, because doing is more determined by outside factors than some would have us believe. E.g. Gina waste-of (a lot of)-space Rinehart, who was in the right place at the right time, born to the right family, plain and simple. The super-successful owe their success as much to outside factors as to their own gumption, which is why all of this "I built it" horseshit is just that: equine feces. All you can do is try and hope for the best.

I'm sure, most studies have flaws.  I'm sure i'd poke some holes in it myself if i wasn't feeling lazy and un statlike today.

Different studies tend to show different stuff.  In general it's a hard thing to study because of rapidly changing demographics in general.

The 1975 family isn't really like the family today for example, poorer families are disproportionatly more likely to be single parent families, that can't help.

As for the "real" numbers... honestly I don't remember.  Outside the fact that economic mobility according to the IRS is basically the same as it was 20 years ago.   Economic mobility INCREASED among workers.   So people were far more likely to move up by getting a better job then their parents... of fall down by getting a worse job.

However. this was offset by economic mobility through marriage.   People were far less likely to move up in income due to marriage.   The rich being more likely to intermarry.  Which makes sense, consdiering the fact that there are more and more rich women and the workplace is still the number one place to meet people.

Instead of Don Draper marrying his secretary... now a days Don Draper is marrying his coworker.