Full Citation
Title: A new measure of relative intergenerational mobility
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2019
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26656.53760
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Abstract: The paper applies a new measure of intergenerational mobility. This measure was originally developed in the assortative mating literature and we adapt it for quantifying the degree of intergenerational mobility along traits like education level and income quantile captured by categorical variables. We argue that the new measure controls for the variations in the trait distributions of young adults and their parents more adequately than a commonly used measure, the intergenerational persistence coefficient. In the empirical application, the investigated trait is the educational attainment and we interpret both the new measure and the intergenerational persistence coefficient as being proxies for the inequality of opportunity for obtaining certain degrees. By using both measures and census data from eight waves, we quantify the extent to which parental education determined the education level of Americans between 1960 and 2015. Surprisingly, the two measures result in qualitatively different findings. In addition, the measures considered have diverging policy implications illustrating the importance of adequately controlling for variations in the trait distributions. Failing to do so can potentially reverse the relative priority of different policies aiming at reducing the heritability of high school degrees and university diplomas.
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Authors: Naszodi, Anna; Cuccu, Liliana
Publisher: European Commission’s Joint Research Centre
Data Collections: IPUMS International
Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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