We construct two new large-scale datasets to measure relative and upward educational mobility by sex, race, class, and childhood county of residence for cohorts born in 1910-1919 and 1982-1997. We show that both relative and upward educational mobility rose over the 20th century, with...

This paper presents new evidence on schooling mobility across three generations in six Latin American countries. By combining survey information with national census data, we have constructed a novel dataset that includes 50,000 triads of grandparents, parents, and children born between 1890 and...

This paper presents new evidence on schooling mobility across three generations in six Latin American countries. By combining survey information with national census data, we have constructed a novel dataset that includes 50,000 triads of grandparents, parents, and children born between 1890 and...

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...

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...

Skill transferability is essential for occupational mobility and adapting to external shocks, yet detailed data on workers’ skills is often scarce and costly to collect, specially in developing countries. This paper explores whether the American O*NET database, one of the most popular...

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...

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...

Homeownership is far less prevalent in Germany than in most other European countries. This Weekly Report examines the extent to which homeownership in Germany depends on the ownership status of parents and how the association has changed over time. Homeownership rates are significantly lower...

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...

Lacking lifetime income data, most intergenerational mobility estimates are subject to lifecycle bias. Using long income series from Sweden and the US, we illustrate that standard correction methods struggle to account for one important property of income processes: children from affluent...

We study the evolution of intergenerational educational mobility and related distributional statistics in Spain. Over recent decades, mobility has risen by one-third, coinciding with pronounced declines in inequality and assortative mating among the same cohorts. To explore these patterns, we...

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...

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...

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...

This paper is the first to show that intergenerational income mobility in Germany has decreased over time. We estimate intergenerational persistence for the birth cohorts 1968-1987 and find that it rises sharply for cohorts born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after which it stabilizes at a...

This study investigates the long-term effects of early-life health on intergenerational mobility in Brazil. Using the first cohort in Brazil, conducted in Ribeirão Preto city in 1978-79, linked to administrative income records, we study the effects of low birth weight on upward mobility and...

This paper analyzes the link between digitalization and intergenerational occupational mobility in Africa. We use a probit model estimated on a large sample of 28 million individuals aged 14 and higher and co-residing with at least one individual from the older generation. We find that...

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...

This study investigates the key drivers behind the wealth accumulation of America's 100 richest self-made billionaires, using data from the Forbes 400 list. Focusing on five individual and contextual factors - education, innovation, networks, inheritance, and geographic origins - the research...

Income shocks and limited upward mobility can undermine people's well-being and economic prospects. Most cross-country studies on income mobility over people's lives rely on survey data, but small samples limit detailed analysis by socio-demographic group or segment of the distribution. This...

This study investigates intergenerational educational immobility and its transmission channels in four developing countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. From data elicited throughout children's childhood, we extract latent factors of children's attributes and their environments. We...

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...