%0 Report
        %A Königs, Sebastian
%A Terrero-Dávila, Javier
        %T Who Climbs the Income Ladder? Cross-Country Evidence on Income Mobility from Tax Record Data
        %D 2025
        %8 2025 Jul
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 17996
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17996
        %X Income shocks and limited upward mobility can undermine people’s well-being and economic prospects. Most cross-country studies on income mobility over people’s lives rely on survey data, but small samples limit detailed analysis by socio-demographic group or segment of the distribution. This paper presents first results of an OECD initiative collecting and harmonising administrative microdata to study income dynamics across countries. Applying rank-rank methods, it measures relative mobility in disposable incomes over five years for working-age people in Austria, Belgium, Canada and Estonia. The paper shows that: i) income persistence is strongest at the bottom and top of the distribution; ii) young people experience larger shifts in income ranks, though not always greater upward mobility; iii) women experience weaker upward mobility than men, particularly in the bottom half of the distribution; and iv) people with tertiary education move up the income ladder, at the expense of those with lower education.
        %K administrative microdata
%K income mobility
%K income distribution