台灣跨代社會流動—以所得、財產及消費分析

Abstract

本文使用1998年至2013年的稅務資料，追蹤至約1,600,000對父母及子女，分別以二代的所得、財產及推估消費作為研究變量，探討台灣跨代間社會流動的情形。 首先，我們以五乘五的轉移矩陣，直接觀察跨代間所得及財產分布的情形。接著，我們使用迴歸分析的方法，分別以父母的所得、財產及推估消費為解釋變數，相對應的子女資料為被解釋變數，估計出跨代彈性及跨代排序流動性係數，迴歸係數愈大，表示跨代流動性愈差。實證結果顯示，台灣整體的所得跨代流動性較歐美國家理想，但流動性是來自於高所得以外的家庭。財產跨代流動性低的現象則是普遍存在於全社會，財產跨代彈性高於所得跨代彈性，且略高於其他國家，顯示台灣跨代間財產的僵固性無法被突破。另一方面，極富有家庭及賺取資本所得的家庭，跨代流動性明顯小於全社會，表示雖然一般家庭的孩子有平均的機會向上流動或向下流動，然而，富有家庭的子女卻有較高的可能會繼續維持其經濟上的優勢。

This paper is the first study using tax records on incomes, assets and pseudo consumption of children and their parents from 1998 to 2013 to present evidence on intergenerational mobility in Taiwan. First, we present the joint distribution of parent-child incomes and assets by means of 5 x 5 transition matrices. Second, we use the income, asset and pseudo consumption data to estimate measures of intergenerational mobility, which include the intergenerational elasticity and the intergenerational rank association between child and parent. On average, the intergenerational mobility in Taiwan is high in comparison to the estimations in the United States and some European countries. Our results reveal a stronger relationship between wealth of children and parents. The intergenerational wealth mobility tends to be lower than the income mobility for Taiwan and the wealth estimations in other countries as well. Moreover, while the overall intergenerational income mobility is high, we find that the mobility is much lower at the very top of both the income and asset distribution. Children growing up with the exception of the upper end of the parental distribution might have equal chance to move upwards or downwards; however, children born to the top income (asset) families are more likely to keep advantages in the upper end of the income and asset distribution.