La movilidad intergeneracional del ingreso y sus métodos de estimación. Un análisis comparativo para Argentina y Chile

The main objective of this article is to evaluate the performance, based on data for Chile and Argentina, of different estimators of the intergenerational elasticity of income (IGE), which is the measurement of immobility of incomes between parents and children most commonly used in the empirical literature. In order to compute the IGE, not only the traditional intergenerational model is considered, but also an alternative model and a new estimation strategy is proposed for cross-sectional data. A comparative analysis of income mobility between generations for Chile and Argentina is also made from methodologically comparable estimates. For this, the data are taken from the CASEN Panel Survey 1996-2001-2006 of Chile that constitutes one of the longest data panels available for a Latin American country, as well as data from various surveys available for Argentina. The estimation results of the traditional model of permanent income suggest that intergenerational income mobility (IIM) tends to be lower in Chile than in Argentina. However, when considering the alternative intergenerational model, the estimates obtained with the new method suggest that IIM levels are similar in both countries, and are relatively low.