The channels of intergenerational transmission of inequality: a cross-country comparison

Family background can influence offspring earnings in two ways: conditioning their educationalattainments (indirect effect) and circumscribing their opportunities in the labour market, independentlyfrom their educational attainment (direct effect). In this paper, following a multi-steps strategy, wedisentangle direct and indirect mechanisms analysing the association between background and several offspring'soutcomes (education, labour market achievements, earnings) and taking into account the attainmentgot in the previous step. We compare 8 EU countries - Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK, Ireland,Denmark and Finland -, in order to assess whether their very different performances about intergenerationalinequality could be related to different roles played by indirect and direct influences of family backgroundon children outcomes in various stages of their lives.