The life-cycle dynamics of wealth mobility
We use 25 years of tax records for the Norwegian population to study the mobility of wealth over people’s lifetimes. We find considerable wealth mobility over the life cycle. To understand the underlying mobility patterns, we group individuals with similar wealth rank histories using agglomerative hierarchical clustering, a tool from statistical learning. The mobility patterns we elicit provide evidence of segmented mobility. Over 60 percent of the population remains at the top or bottom of the wealth distribution throughout their lives.