论文标题：Hollowing out of opportunity: Automation technology and intergenerational mobility in the United States

发表时间：2022.4

论文所有作者：Ningning Guo

期刊名及所属分类：Labour Economics (SSCI)

英文摘要：Recent automation technology has lead to job polarization in the U.S. labour market since 1980. Middle-skill jobs, which provide decent wages for relatively uneducated people, have been shrinking in terms of employment share, pushing those workers into low-wage service jobs. In this paper, by exploiting spatial variation in the exposure to technological substitution, I provide suggestive evidence that automation technology has contributed to the decline of upward mobility of children from poor and middle-class families. My analysis suggests that middle-skill jobs are an indispensable channel for disadvantaged children to move upward. In addition, this paper provides a plausible explanation for the puzzling observation that relative mobility has stayed constant in the U.S. during recent decades, despite the rapidly increasing income inequality.