A Tale of Two Transitions: Mobility Dynamics in China and Russia After Central Planning

ABSTRACT

This paper examines intergenerational mobility in China and Russia during their transitions from central planning to market systems. We consider mobility as movement, measured as changes in status between parents and children. We provide estimates of two key mobility measures: overall mobility, which captures total intergenerational movement including the effects of changing class distributions across generations, and steady‐state mobility, which captures the long‐run mobility intrinsic to the intergenerational process once the class distribution has stabilized. We further decompose overall mobility into structural and exchange components. We find that China exhibits more overall educational mobility than Russia, mostly due to greater structural mobility, while Russia exhibits greater steady‐state educational mobility. Overall and steady‐state occupational mobility are similar in China and Russia. Comparing these results to the US, we find that educational steady‐state mobility is substantially lower in China than in both Russia and the US, with Russia being the most mobile, but occupational steady‐state mobility is comparable across all three countries.