Using harmonized household survey data, we analyse long run social mobility in the US, the UK, and Germany and test recent theories of multigenerational persistence of socio-economic status. In this country comparison setting we find evidence against Gregory Clark's "universal law of social...

We seek to quantify the role of education as a mechanism through which family background affects earnings. To this end, we propose a generalisation of statistical 'mediation analysis'. In our approach, the treatment and mediator can be multidimensional. This allows us to directly and flexibly...

Countries with high income inequality also show a strong association between parents' and children's economic well-being; i.e. low intergenerational mobility. This study is the first to test this relationship in a between and within country setup, using harmonized micro data from 18 Latin...

To understand the degree of intergenerational mobility in the United States, and the differences between Americans and others, it is important to appreciate the workings and interaction of three fundamental institutions: the family, the market, and the state. But comparisons can also be...

We estimate the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) of income for the Netherlands using complete population data for around 177,000 28-year olds. We find that IGEs are much lower when actual individual income data are used rather than proxies or aggregates for income. Though low, daughters' IGEs...

This paper explores the variation in intergenerational educational mobility across the Brazilian states based on Markov transition matrixes and univariate econometric techniques. The analysis of the national household survey (PNAD-2014) confirms a strong variation in mobility among the 27...

In societies where surnames are inherited from parents, we can use these names to estimate rates of intergenerational mobility. This paper explains how to make such estimates, and illustrates their use in pre-industrial England and modern Chile and India. These surname estimates have the...

Empirical findings suggest a positive correlation between inequality and social immobility, a phenomenon coined the Gatsby curve. However, complete explanations of the phenomenon have not yet been proposed. This paper answers two questions: What are Gatsby curves? When do they exist? We build a...

Relying on harmonized individual data for Germany and the United States, we perform a country comparison regarding the underlying mechanisms of the intergenerational income mobility. By applying descriptive and structural decomposition methods, we estimate the relative importance of the...

Countries with high income inequality also show a strong association between parents' and children’s economic well-being; i.e. low intergenerational mobility. This study is the first to test this relationship in a between-country and within-country setup; using harmonized micro data from 18...