Working Papers

Identification and Estimation of Intergenerational Income Mobility Measures

Abstract
Measuring the intergenerational transmission of lifetime economic status is complicated by researchers often only observing snapshots of income at specific ages. Consequently, standard practice estimates intergenerational mobility using income averages, introducing life-cycle bias that compromises reliability and comparability across studies, time, and place. I develop a missing data framework that exploits available income data and observable characteristics to eliminate life-cycle bias. This method combines nonparametric identification with Neyman-orthogonal moments to construct debiased machine learning estimators for intergenerational income mobility measures under plausible missing-at-random and testable independence assumptions. I apply this framework to estimate the intergenerational elasticity for the U.S. using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics across birth cohorts from 1954 to 1977 with rolling 10-year windows. While existing approaches estimate values between 0.41 and 0.54, the proposed method yields substantially higher estimates ranging from 0.6 to 0.7, averaging 0.64. These results align closely with recent evidence using long time averages over mid-career periods, reinforcing high U.S. intergenerational persistence.

Family Background and Economic Mobility: Evidence from the US

Abstract
This paper examines how family background relates to economic mobility for disadvantaged children. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for below-median income, multiple-child families. Using a novel approach combining family fixed effects, Empirical Bayes shrinkage, and SHapley Additive exPlanations, we identify which family characteristics most strongly predict children’s economic outcomes relative to their parents, holding parental income constant. Our findings reveal that race and family structure are the primary predictors, accounting for 35% and 22.4% of the explained variation, respectively. While supporting the well-documented racial disparities in intergenerational mobility, our results suggest that the role of family structure in intergenerational mobility extends beyond the single- versus two-parent household distinction.

Shelter from the Storm: A Simulation Framework for Vulnerability under Climate Shocks
with Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, Carlos Rodriguez-Castelán, and Carolina Vélez-Ospina

Abstract
This paper proposes a nonparametric simulation framework to estimate poverty vulnerability under climate shocks. We formalize vulnerability estimation as an out-of-sample prediction problem and show that flexible, regularized machine learning methods for estimating the conditional mean of welfare offer a powerful alternative to conventional linear models. The framework simulates future welfare distributions using historical realizations of climate shocks and household characteristics, enabling the estimation of vulnerability measures and related functions without imposing restrictive parametric assumptions. To interpret the model and quantify heterogeneous impacts, we employ SHapley Additive exPlanations, which decompose predicted vulnerability into contributions from climate shocks and household characteristics. An application to Ecuador reveals a strong geographic concentration of vulnerability and shows that climate shocks act as localized triggers that push marginal households, particularly low-educated informal rural workers into poverty.

Publications

Here Comes the Rain: Precipitation Shocks and Economic Outcomes in Ecuador
with Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza and Andrey Ramos
World Development (2026)

On the Effects of Wildfires on Poverty in Bolivia
with Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza and Andrey Ramos
Journal of Development Economics (2025)

A spatial one-sided error model to identify where unarrested criminals live
with Andrés Ramírez-Hassan
Economic Modelling (2025)

Efficiency in Poverty Reduction in Bolivia
with Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza and Javier Beverinotti
Journal of Policy Modeling (2025)

Promoting academic honesty: a Bayesian causal analysis of an integrity pilot campaign
with Andrés Ramírez-Hassan
Education Economics (2022)
Working paper version available here

Revisiting Tax Effort in Emerging Markets
with Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, Maria Cecilia Deza, and Osmel Manzano
Public Finance Review (2022)
Working paper version available here

Chapters in Books

Evaluating Educational Policies in Practice
with Vedant Bhardwaj and María Valkov
Economics of Education, Springer Nature (2025)

Contributions to Policy Reports

Poverty and Equity Assessment in Ecuador (in Spanish)
World Bank (2025)

Series: How to accelerate economic growth and strengthen the middle class (in Spanish), Inter-American Development Bank (2020), covering: Perú, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia.