There are three main ways that absolute mobility are measured in Chetty et al (2014): 
- absolute upward mobility: the primary measure of absolute mobility; the mean rank (in the national child income distribution) of children whose parents are at the 25th percentile of the national parent income distribution.
- the "American Dream": the probability of rising from the bottom quintile to the top quintile of the income distribution.
- The poverty line: the probability that a child has a family above the poverty line conditional on having parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution

University of Texas at Austin

Absolute mobility determines whether children earn the same (adjusted) income that their parents did at the same age. Absolute mobility asks, "what are the incomes of families from a given income level in absolute terms?" 

Absolute Mobility

Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1553-1623.

Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States.

Though one could study any direction of absolute mobility, much of the study of absolute mobility in the US has been on absolute upward mobility, or the mobility of children who's family occupies the lowest quintile of income. 

In the United States, absolute upward mobility is: 
- almost perfectly linear across commuter zones (CZs)
- highly variable across commuter zones (CZs), with the Southeast region having the lowest upward mobility and the Great Plains Regions having the highest mobility.
- high in the Northeast and West regions, but not as high there as in the Great Plains region.
- very low in Native American reservations, which are known to have persistent poverty.


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