Intergenerational Earnings Mobility Among Daughters and Sons: Evidence from Sweden and a Comparison with the United States

• Published in: The American journal of economics and sociology Vol. 67; no. 5; pp. 777 - 826
• Main Author: Hirvonen, Lalaina H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01.11.2008; Wiley Subscription Services; Wiley-Blackwell; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Assortative Mating; Business and economics; Children; Classes, stratification, mobility; Comparative Analysis; Daughters; Earnings; Economic models; Economics; Ekonomi; Elasticity; Family income; Fathers; General studies; Income; Income estimates; Income mobility; Intergenerational Mobility; International comparisons; Nationalekonomi; Parents; Pay; Quantile Regression; Regression analysis; SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP; Sample size; Sex Differences; Social Mobility; Social organization. Social system. Social structure; SOCIAL SCIENCES; Sociology; Sociology of the family. Age groups; Sons; Studies; Sweden; Transition Matrices; U.S.A; United States of America; United States Of America; Sweden; United States > US; Intergenerational Mobility; Transmission; Crossnational Comparisons
• ISSN: 0002-9246; 1536-7150; 1536-7150
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2008.00598.x

This article adopts Chadwick and Solon's (2002) model by using family earnings in the study of intergenerational earnings mobility with a highlight on the role of assortative mating. I analyze mean and quantile regression coefficients as well as transition matrices to investigate family earnings mobility between parents and daughters and parents and sons from Swedish register data. My findings indicate that Sweden has a higher degree of mobility compared to the United States, and that assortative mating also plays an important role as a channel through which income status is transmitted across generations in Sweden. However, the difference in intergenerational mobility patterns between the two countries does not, inherently, depend on factors that affect the marriage match. Swedish daughters and sons exhibit a rather similar scheme of intergenerational earnings transmission. Daughters tend to be slightly more mobile than sons, and the difference between their elasticity estimates is small but statistically significant. The quantile regression approach reveals that parents' family earnings are less important as an explanatory variable at the upper end of the children's earnings distribution than they are at the bottom, while transition matrices show substantial earnings persistence in the top earnings class.