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Title: The Missing Link(s): Women and Intergenerational Mobility

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: Throughout US history, mothers played an important role in educating their children. However, this role is obscured because limitations in data and methods have prevented researchers from including women in intergenerational studies. By lever-aging data from Social Security applications, we build a large panel that tracks both men and women over time despite marital name changes. We measure intergenera-tional mobility as the share of variation in child outcomes explained by parental background (R 2), which we decompose into mothers' and fathers' separate contributions. We find that a mother's human capital is a key determinant of her child's outcomes, often surpassing the influence of fathers, especially for daughters and Black children. More generally, maternal human capital is more important for children with limited school access. Incorporating mothers' human capital suggests that, contrary to current evidence, intergenerational mobility increased over the 19 th century.

Url: https://hugoreichardt.github.io/pdf/igm_women.pdf

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Authors: Althoff, Lukas; Brookes Gray, Harriet; Reichardt, Hugo; Boustan, Leah; Derenoncourt, Ellora; Diamond, Rebecca; Evans, Alice; Grigsby, John; Kuziemko, Ilyana; Valenzuela, Pablo

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Gender, Methodology and Data Collection

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