Human Capital and
Economic Opportunity
Global Working Group

We provide a common set of life-cycle earnings statistics based on administrative data from the United States, Canada, Denmark and Sweden. We find three qualitative patterns, which are common across countries. First, top-earnings inequality increases over the working lifetime.

One of the most important decisions a student can make during the course of his or her college career is the choice of major.

We characterize intergenerational income mobility at each college in the United States using data for over 30 million college students from 1999-2013. We document four results. First, access to colleges varies greatly by parent income.