In this paper we estimate social mobility rates, free of measurement errors, using register data for Denmark and Sweden, 1968 to 2021. To correct for measurement error attenuation, we take ratios of the correlation of relatives at different locations in family trees, such as cousins relative to...

This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world's population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income...

We use data from the Istanbul court registers spanning from the 16th-19th centuries to establish, for the first time, long-term trends in intergenerational mobility in a major premodern city. The dataset contains information on over 270,000 individuals who appeared in court in various roles,...

Education is an important tool used to equip knowledge and pursue self-improvement, which may affect intergenerational social class mobility through human capital accumulation. Using 8014 mixed cross-section samples from the 2017, 2018 and 2021 China General Social Survey (CGSS), an...

We estimate the intergenerational effects of compulsory schooling (CS) laws in the United States (1875 to 1940), exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws and using difference-in-differences and instrumental variable (IV) approaches in a linked panel of full-count US census data....

Among economists, empirical analysis of social mobility and the role of parental background is largely carried out in two separate strands of research. The intergenerational mobility literature estimates parent-child persistence in a certain outcome of interest, such as income. In contrast, the...

Among economists, empirical analysis of social mobility and the role of parental background is largely carried out in two separate strands of research. The intergenerational mobility literature estimates parent-child persistence in a certain outcome of interest, such as income. In contrast, the...

This paper is the first to provide estimates of intergenerational associations in mental health for a low- and middle-income country. Using rich mental health data on ~4,000 parent-child pairs in India, we find intergenerational associations in depression and anxiety scores to be 0.61 and 0.68,...

Rank-rank regression is commonly employed in economic research as a way of capturing the relationship between two economic variables. It frequently features in studies of intergenerational mobility as the resulting coefficient, capturing the rank correlation between the variables, is easy to...

How did the US become a land of opportunity? We show that the country’s pioneering role in mass education was key. Unlike previous research, which has focused on father-son income correlations, we incorporate both parents in a new measure of intergenerational mobility that considers multiple...

We estimate intergenerational mobility of immigrants and their children in fifteen receiving countries. We document large income gaps for first-generation immigrants that diminish in the second generation. Around half of the second-generation gap can be explained by differences in parental...

We provide the first estimates of broad-based health transmission between parents and their young children in India. The correlations between maternal health and child health outcomes - such as anemia, stunting, and body mass index - are approximately 0.20. When aggregating these health measures...

This paper exploits molecular genetic data to quantify genetic confounding in parent-child educational outcomes. We develop a model of the intergenerational transmission of education based on insights from the literature on social science genetics. The model distinguishes between two types of...

This paper is the first to show that intergenerational income mobility in Germany has decreased over time. We provide estimates of intergenerational persistence for the birth cohorts 1968-1987 and document that the rank-rank slope rises sharply for cohorts born in the late 1970s and early 1980s,...

This paper provides new insights on the importance of family background by linking 1.7 million Dutch children's incomes to an exceptionally rich set of family characteristics - including income, wealth, education, occupation, crime, and health. Using a machine learning approach, I show that...

This paper examines intergenerational mobility in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Russia during their transitions from central planning to market systems. We consider mobility as movement captured by changes in status between parents and children. We provide estimates of overall...

We employ distribution regression to estimate the joint distribution of two outcome variables conditional on covariates. Bivariate Distribution Regression (BDR) is particularly valuable when some dependence between the outcomes persists after accounting for the impact of the covariates. Our...

The strong evidence in support of the Great Gatsby Curve (i.e. the negative cross-sectional relationship between intergenerational mobility and inequality) seems to be at odds with the fact that large increases in inequality in the US have not resulted in decreases in mobility. We tackle this...

We provide new evidence on intergenerational social mobility among immigrants and natives in France. Using linked parent–child data from censuses, we introduce an individual-level metric - the Intergenerational Rank Difference (IRD) - that measures upward and downward mobility relative to the...

This paper argues that relative measures of intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity are closely related ways of quantifying the inheritability of inequality. We review both literatures for Latin America, looking both at income and educational persistence. We document very high...

We assess intergenerational mobility in terms of education and income rank in five Latin American countries - Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama - by accounting for the education and occupation of both parents. Based on the Lubotsky and Wittenberg (2006) approach, we find that...

Measuring income gaps across family backgrounds is crucial for evaluating inequality and informing policy. I develop a multidimensional approach and apply it to Dutch administrative data with exceptionally rich information on parents and extended family. This approach reveals strikingly larger...

A recent article in PNAS "The Inheritance of Social Status in England, 1600-1822" (Clark, 2023) argued that social status in England throughout these years showed a strong and stable pattern of inheritance. This pattern was consistent with the additive genetic inheritance of social abilities, in...

This paper examines earnings differences between first-generation and continuing generation college graduates across 24 OECD countries using data from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). In all but two of the countries analysed, first-generation graduates earn less than their peers from...

This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of socio-emotional skills during childhood, using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) in the United Kingdom. This dataset enables us to measure two dimensions of socio-emotional development: internalising and externalising...

This paper estimates intergenerational mobility in education, using data from 91 censuses in 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spanning over half a century. It measures upward mobility as the likelihood that individuals will complete one educational stage more than their parents...

Increasing inequalities in multiple dimensions have played a role in fostering a feeling of injustice and triggering social dissatisfaction. While fairness is subjective, the far-reaching impact of perceptions of unfairness necessitates a more thorough examination and thoughtful consideration of...