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There are conflicting views of the primary role of income inequality in economic development. Many expect that higher income shares at the top reflect substantial economic contributions while others think that these increases in top shares have not translated into higher economic growth. Recently, this debate has been reinvigorated by a new proposal: higher income inequality could hurt economic performance by decreasing future intergenerational mobility. We contribute to this debate by examining the relationship between intergenerational perceived job status mobility and past income inequality. We find a robust negative association of lagged income inequality with upward intergenerational job status mobility and a robust positive association of lagged income inequality with downward intergenerational job status mobility. In addition, we find that the quality of political institutions and religious fractionalization both contribute positively to job status mobility. Higher levels of past Gross Domestic Product (GDP) result in less upward job status mobility and more downward job status mobility.

Income inequality in Brazil is high and persistent, explained at least in part by low intergenerational income mobility. Despite the increasing female labor participation, most of the studies consider only father’s income to analyze intergenerational mobility. This chapter aims to analyze the role of mothers in intergenerational income mobility and the differences in mobility patterns between daughters and sons in Brazil. We use information from social mobility supplement of 2014 National Household Sample Survey to estimate intergenerational elasticity of labor income. The results show that the relation between mothers’ and children’s income is almost as high as that of fathers, especially for daughters. Mobility patterns’ analysis reveals no significant differences between daughters and sons. However, gender income inequalities are more pronounced for women from poor families. As returns to education are increasing, the educational advantage of female over male workers seems to offset gender gap for those of richer families. Moreover, the educational mobility between generations was higher for daughters than for sons. Despite that, daughters did not experience greater income mobility than sons. These results suggest that equalizing educational opportunities is important to promote intergenerational income mobility, although not sufficient. Nowadays, women in Brazil are more educated than men, but there exist social barriers to achieve equal payment for similar levels of schooling. Then, there is still room for gendered actions and policies related to improvements in labor market conditions to narrow the gender wage gap between men and women and between workers from richer and poorer families.

This chapter explores the relation between personal well-being – measured with life satisfaction – and intergenerational mobility in Spain (2017). We start by applying machine learning techniques to overcome traditional data limitations and estimate intergenerational income mobility. Then, by means of several econometric specifications, we find the relation between personal well-being and intergenerational income mobility to be non-significant. This result is robust to several measures of educational and occupational mobility. Contrary to the comparison theory, if Spanish citizens derive well-being benefits or losses from intergenerational mobility, these effects are not permanent and dissipate with time. We find other variables, such as enjoying good health, higher income levels and marriage, to be positively associated with life satisfaction. Overall, personal well-being in Spain is more related to materialistic aspects rather than to the comparison of individuals’ current position against the previous generations’ socio-economic status.

This paper analyzes the impact of family background characteristics and social exclusion features on the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment and income positions, and the relative poverty risk in Germany and the United States. These countries vary widely by welfare regime, family role patterns, and labor market settings. From these differences we predict higher intergenerational income elasticities in the United States and higher intergenerational educational elasticities in Germany. Using longitudinal data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) 1980–2008, we find some empirical support for these hypotheses. In both countries, parental educational attainment stimulates intergenerational economic and social mobility, which accentuates the importance of promoting human capital accumulation.

This paper documents how gender differences in occupational status (defined by earnings, education, and returns to skills) have evolved over time and across generations. The paper finds a persistent gender earnings gap, a reversal of the education gap, and a convergence in starting salaries and returns to experience. Divergent occupational choices might explain part of the persistent gender gaps and women’s failure to reach parity with men in the earnings distribution. Women choose more flexible jobs than men. But whereas men dominate women in high-powered occupations, they are also more likely to be in low-skilled low-pay occupations. Differential effects of children and time spent keeping house explain most of the gender gap in high-powered occupations but cannot explain fully why women choose more flexible occupations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intergenerational occupational mobility for young women (vis-à-vis their mothers) in India and six of its states from its diverse geographic regions which contribute 39 percent of the Indian population.

The study uses transition/mobility matrices and multiple mobility measures for examination of intergenerational occupational mobility among young females in India by using the data from the “India Youth Survey: Situation and Needs” from the year 2006 to 2007.

The study finds that intergenerational occupational mobility among the young women in India is about 71 percent, but surprisingly it is predominantly downwards. The urban areas have higher occupational mobility than the rural areas. However, upward intergenerational occupational mobility is lower among the young SC/ST women compared to the young women belonging to the “Others” caste category. Moreover, upward mobility in the economically and demographically poorer states is much lower than that of other states.

The present study is the only study which examines how women perform vis-à-vis their mothers in terms of occupational attainment in the Indian context.

A few studies in India have related daughters’ education to their fathers, but there is little to no evidence when it comes to the intergenerational relation between daughters and mothers’ education. Using India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2011–2012, the purpose of this paper is to investigate intergenerational educational mobility among women (15–49 years) (vis-à-vis their mothers) for all India.

The study uses transition/mobility matrices and multiple mobility measures for the examination of intergenerational educational mobility among women (15–49 years) in India. The data have been taken from the “India Human Development Survey 2011-12.”

Findings indicate that intergenerational educational mobility at the all-India level is about 0.69, that is, 69 percent of the women acquire a level of education different from their mothers. Of the overall mobility, about 80 percent is contributed by upward mobility whereas the rest is downward. Mobility is greater in urban areas and is highest among the socially advantaged “Others” (or upper) caste group. Also, the upward component is substantially lower for socially disadvantaged groups compared to others. Further, there are large inter-regional variations, with the situation being worst in the central and eastern states such as Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, etc. Moreover, mobility (overall and upward) increases consistently as one moves up the income distribution.

This study is perhaps the first study which comprehensively studies intergenerational educational mobility for women (15–49 years) at an all-India level. Findings not only capture the mobility at the aggregate level but also for different caste groups as well as regional variations and income effect.

Ideal estimates of the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) in income require a large panel of income data covering the entire working lifetimes for two generations. Previous studies have demonstrated that using short panels and covering only certain portions of the life cycle can lead to considerable bias. I address these biases by using the PSID and constructing long time averages centered at age 40 in both generations. I find that the IGE in family income in the United States is likely greater than 0.6 suggesting a relatively low rate of intergenerational mobility in the United States. I find similar sized estimates for the IGE in labor income. These estimates support the prior findings of Mazumder (2005a, b) and are also similar to comparable estimates reported by Mitnik et al. (2015). In contrast, a recent influential study by Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez (2014) using tax data that begins in 1996 estimates the IGE in family income for the United States to be just 0.344 implying a much higher rate of intergenerational mobility. I demonstrate that despite the seeming advantages of extremely large samples of administrative tax data, the age structure, and limited panel dimension of the data used by Chetty et al. leads to considerable downward bias in estimating the IGE. I further demonstrate that the sensitivity checks in Chetty et al. regarding the age at which children’s income is measured, and the length of the time average of parent income used to estimate the IGE suffer from biases due to these data limitations. There are also concerns that tax data, unlike survey data, may not adequately reflect all sources of family income. Estimates of the rank–rank slope, Chetty et al.’s preferred estimator, are more robust to the limitations of the tax data but are also downward biased and modestly overstate mobility. However, Chetty et al.’s main findings of sizable geographic differences within the US in rank mobility are unlikely to be affected by these biases. I conclude that researchers should continue to use both the IGE and rank-based measures depending on their preferred concept of mobility. It is also important for researchers to have adequate coverage of key portions of the life cycle and to consider the possible drawbacks of using administrative data.

This chapter estimates the degree of intergenerational educational mobility in Argentina, focusing on the mobility differences between teenagers and young adults. Based on a new database, the Survey of Employment and Education of Youth (CEDLAS-INDEC) nonbiased mobility estimators for children older than teenagers is obtained. Our robust estimations reveal a lower degree of intergenerational mobility for young adults than for teenagers. Furthermore, young adult immobility is not uniform across parents’ education level. Finally, gender differences also affect mobility.

Social mobility research starts conventionally from the children's generation and looks at group-specific individual life chances. However, an immediate interpretation of these results as measures of social reproduction is often misleading. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of a related but alternative approach which looks at intergenerational links from the perspective of the parents’ generation. It asks about the consequences of social inequality in this generation for the following generation(s). This includes questions of how the parental origin context is formed, whether there are any children at all and when they were born as well as the aspect of these children's relative chances of attaining particular social positions. As an empirical example, the paper describes patterns of educational reproduction in (West) Germany during the mid- and late 20th century. Simulations allow assessing the relative importance of various partial processes of social reproduction. A large proportion of the observed levels of educational reproduction can be attributed to family-related processes such as union formation. Drawing together analyses from various areas, the paper combines questions of social mobility research with a demographic perspective and broadens the analytical basis of inequality research for systematic comparative research.