The Link Between Union Membership and Economic Mobility

There are strong reasons to believe that unions may increase opportunity.

Part of a Series

Idea of the Day

Idea of the Day

Recent research shows that five factors have the strongest geographical relationship—positive or negative—with mobility: single motherhood rates, income inequality, high school dropout rates, social capital, and segregation.

This report examines the relationship between mobility and another variable: union membership. The analysis in this report begins on the area level using the same methodological approach as Chetty and his co-authors for their five factors. But the analysis then goes beyond this area-level analysis, using another dataset that matches parents with children that allows for the comparison of outcomes for children who grew up in otherwise similar union and nonunion households.

For more on this idea, please see:

Bargaining for the American Dream by Richard Freeman, Eunice Han, David Madland, and Brendan Duke

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