Social Mobility: The Barro-Becker Children Meet the Laitner-Loury Dynasties

I compare the predictions of two types of dynastic models for the persistence of wealth across generations: models that focus on uninsurable risk and intergenerational consumption smoothing but abstract from the fertility decision, such as Loury and Laitner, and models without risk that focus on the fertility decision, such as Becker and Barro. I show that when both uninsurable risk and fertility decisions are present, a striking result obtains: wealthier parents have more children, but the transfer to each child is independent of wealth. Since this result is counterfactual, I also discuss extensions that can resurrect persistence. (C) 1999 Academic Press