Mobility and Modality Trends in US State Personal Income

Regional Studies 2002 George Hammond and Eric Thompson We examine mobility and modality trends in US state per capital personal income (and its components) during the 1929-1999 period. We find strong evidence of convergence for states, but that the tendency towards convergence (and the associated mobility within the distribution) varies during the period and especially for the 1980s. Our analysis of convergence by income component suggests that transfer income contributes more to the observed convergence than does asset income. We also note that distributional mobility need not be accompanied by high rank mobility and find that trends towards convergence in the US have tended to preserve rank ordering.

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	Thompson, Eric Associate Professor of Economics Director of the Bureau of Business Research Economics CBA 347 P.O. Box 880489 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588-0489, USA Phone: (402) 472-3318 Fax: (402) 472-9700 ethompson2@unl.edu	Thompson, Eric	Economics