The age profile of mobility measures: an application to earnings in West Germany

This paper develops a technique for estimating age-profiles of earnings mobility using conditional kernel density estimation and establishes their statistical properties. Both pointwise and simultaneous confidence intervals are derived. The paper then examines the age-profile of short-run earnings mobility in Germany between 1983 and 1993 using the Socio-Economic Panel data. It turns out that earnings mobility is significantly higher for young people than for elder ones. Mobility declines rather rapidly until the age of thirty-five or so and remains constant thereafter. The shape of the profile does not change significantly during the observation period. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.