Rising wealth inequality has spurred an increased interest in understanding how and why wealth is correlated across generations. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in housing wealth driven by home price changes in different areas to isolate the causal impact of parental housing wealth...

We examine the role of health shocks in childhood and parental background in transmitting intergenerational inequality. We use Danish administrative registry data (a setting with universal access to health care) and the quasi-random onset of Type 1 Diabetes in childhood to document substantial...

We use an overlapping generations model to investigate the role of parental health investment and children's schooling on the aggregate level of human capital and inequality. In our model, parental longevity affects children's human capital since it impacts human capital transmission. When poor...

The standard economic model of occupational choice following a basic Roy model emphasizes individual selection and comparative advantage, but the sources of comparative advantage are not well understood. We employ a unique combination of Dutch survey and registry data that links math and...

How does a large structural change to the labor market affect education investments made at young ages? Exploiting differential exposure to the national decline in routine-task intensity across local labor markets, we show that the secular decline in routine tasks causes major shifts in...

This article presents a novel explanation why demand for redistribution on average does not respond to information on low intergenerational mobility. Building on insights from behavioral economics, we expect that incentives to update perceptions of intergenerational mobility change along the...

This article presents a novel explanation why demand for redistribution on average does not respond to information on low intergenerational mobility. Building on insights from behavioral economics, we expect that incentives to update perceptions of intergenerational mobility change along the...

This paper studies the influence of pre-migration social background on the longterm economic assimilation of immigrants. I use unique French survey data to trace family histories over three generations, before and after migration. While many immigrants experience an occupational downgrading at...

We study the intergeneration transmission of physicians' economic preferences by examining the risk and altruistic preferences of medical students and one of their parents with incentivized experiments. We find that altruistic parents are more likely to raise altruistic children who are also...

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of bequests left by married couples when the first member of the couple dies. I document that married couples frequently leave bequests to individuals other than the surviving spouse and that these “early” bequests can be large in magnitude....