Spanish income mobility in the period 2017-2020

Abstract

Income mobility is a dynamic phenomenon that may pave the way for the establishment of egalitarian societies aimed at enhancing the global welfare of the individuals and dismantling social and economic concerns such as poverty and inequality. This Master’s thesis analyses short-term intragenerational income mobility in Spanish households and studies empirically its determinants for the period 2017-2020 by using longitudinal data from EU-SILC that track the incomes and demographic characteristics of a selected sample of the population. Income mobility analysis is examined on the basis of two characterized income mobility measures and the drivers of income mobility are identified by means of several OLS regressions. Results reveal that income dynamics differ notoriously across Autonomous Communities depending on the nature of the indices considered, though all measures agree on Cantabria and Asturias as some of the locations with the greatest and lowest income mobility, respectively, and transfers between individuals as the main component for income mobility in Spain for the period at issue. As for the econometric approach, outcomes suggest that the income level at the first year turns fundamental to define the relationship between the particular circumstances of households at the beginning of the period and their subsequent income change.