Cultural Inheritance, Gender, and Intergenerational Occupational Mobility: Evidence from a Developing Economy

This paper presents evidence on intergenerational occupational mobility from agriculture to the nonfarm sector using survey data from Nepal with a focus on the role played by cultural inheritance and gender norms. In the absence of credible instruments, the degree of selection on observables is used as a guide to the degree of selection on unobservables ´a la Altonji et. al. (2005) to address the unobserved genetic correlations. The results show that cultural inheritance plays a causal role in intergenerational occupational correlation between the mother and daughter. In contrast, there is no robust evidence that cultural inheritance is important for sons’ occupation choice. A moderate genetic correlation can easily explain away the estimated partial correlation in non-farm participation between the father and a son.