Calendar detail

Speaker:
Isabel Martínez (KOF Institute at ETH Zurich)

Abstract: Using large administrative datasets from Switzerland, we study the intergenerational transmission of economic status along four dimensions: income, wealth, education, and occupation status. Thanks to the linkage of i) full population census data with ii) social security earnings records dating back to 1981, iii) individual income and wealth tax data, and iv) large population surveys, we obtain precise measures of our outcomes around age 30 for all the cohorts born 1967-1982 and their parents.
Our first results show that income mobility is particularly high in international comparison, exceeding the rates observed in the U.S. or even in Sweden- while at the same time educational and occupational mobility are low. However, we find that over time absolute upward income mobility has declined for cohorts born after 1975. Overall, differences between natives and foreign-born are small, but we find different trends in absolute upward mobility depending on the chosen outcome. We further shed light on employment probabilities of women and mothers and the prevalence of entrepreneurship, given parental working histories. Mother’s occupation and education are less correlated with the respective child outcomes than father’s. This suggests that family culture matters for intergenerational transmission of economic status. Even though mothers typically spend more time with their children than fathers, their background has less of an impact on children’s economic status later in life.

Website