We investigate the relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility. Proxying fathers’ earnings with using detailed occupational data, we find that sons who grew up in countries that were more unequal in the 1970s were less likely to have experienced social mobility by the late-1990s.

Re ec ce en nt t T Tr re en nd ds s i in n t th he e I In nh he er ri it ta an nc ce e o of f P Po ov ve er rt ty y a an nd d F Fa am mi il ly y S St tr ru uc ct tu ur re e ABSTRACT. This study investigates trends in the interdependence of poverty and family structure from one generation to the next, focusing specifically on mothers and daughters. This aspect of the mobility process has not bee...

VOL. 24 / NO. 1 / SPRING 2014 61 Summary Better-educated parents generally have children who are themselves better educated, healthier, wealthier, and better off in almost every way than the children of the less educated. But this simple correlation does not prove that the relationship is causal. Neeraj Kaushal sifts through the evidence from economics and public policy and reviews large nation...

Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, we study the role played by land inheritance, other bequests and parental background as influences on an adult’s economic welfare and economic activities. While intergenerational linkages are evident, we find a seemingly high degree of mobility across generations, associated with the shift from farm to ...

A substantial body of research has demonstrated links between poverty and family structure from one generation to the next, but has left open key questions about the implications of these associations for aggregate-level change. To what extent does intergenerational inheritance affect trends in poverty and single parenthood over time and, in particular, trends in the relative economic positions...

This study examines cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their transmission from parents to children as one potential candidate to explain the intergenerational link of socio-economic status. Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we contrast the impact of parental cognitive abilities (fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence) and personality traits (Big Fi...

It is widely believed that countries with greater levels of income inequality also have lower levels of intergenerational mobility. This relationship, known as the Great Gatsby Curve (GGC), has been prominently cited by high-ranking public policy makers, best-selling authors and Nobel Prize winning academics. Yet relatively little cross-national work has empirically examined the mechanisms thou...

The relationship between industrialization and intergenerational mobility has been a topic of discussion for over forty years. In this article both total mobility and relative mobility chances are studied in the decades preceding industrialization and the decades during industrialization. A high-quality data set is used covering the male population of a region in the north of Sweden during the ...

In Paper [I] we analyze the implications of social identity and self -categorization for optimal redistributive income taxation. A two-type model is supplemented by an assumption that individuals select themselves into social categories, in which norms are formed and education effort choices partly depend on these norms. The results show, among other things, that externality correction by a wel...