Measuring the link between intergenerational occupational mobility and earnings: evidence from 8 European Countries (original) (raw)

This paper suggests a synthetic measure of social mobility that can be used to decompose the residual correlation between parental background and child earnings, left after controlling for backgroundrelated intervening factors. Using the EU-SILC dataset for 8 countries, our analysis shows that country differences concern residual correlations rather than patterns of occupational mobility. Decompositions make it evident that significant residual background correlations observed in the UK and in Southern countries mask respectively penalties to upward mobility and a parachute against downward mobility. In turn, insignificant residual effects encompass penalties to both downward and upward mobility in Germany and France, and no patterns in Nordic countries. In quantile regressions, residual background correlations appear to increase along the distribution, but are much flatter in Southern countries. Even if we are not able to provide causal explanations, we suggest that especially in unequal countries results would hardly agree with a standard human explanation.