A strong association between incomes across generations - with children from poor families likely to be poor as adults - is frequently considered an indicator of insufficient equality of opportunity. Studies of such "intergenerational persistence," or lack of intergenerational mobility, are...

This paper proposes an estimate of the extent of opportunity inequality and of its determinants in a sample of European countries, based on the Survey on Income and Living Conditions conducted in 2005. Although the ranking among Northern European and Mediterranean countries is generally...

Disparities between social groups transcend the boundary of current generation and perpetuate across future generations as well. This is manifested as low intergenerational mobility in terms of both education and occupation in developing countries in general, and among specific ethnic groups...

The paper examines the structure and the extent of intergenerational income mobility in Germany. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel it is possible to look at both, fatherson and father-daughter pairs. In the present case the intergenerational income elasticity is 0.26 for father-son...

Patterns of intergenerational educational mobility are studied in twelve post-communist countries of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. No clear trend in educational inheritance emerges over the recent 50 years, covering both the period of socialism and transition to a market economy....

We examine the association of income variability both within and across generations based on a heterogeneous growth model of permanent and transitory income in Sweden. Non-parametric regressions reveal that income variability is strongly associated with long-run levels of income, especially for...

The intergenerational elasticity of income is considered one of the best measures of the degree to which a society gives equal opportunity to its members. While much research has been devoted to measuring this reduced-form parameter, less is known about its underlying structural determinants....

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

This paper presents new evidence on intergenerational mobility at the top of the income and earnings distributions. Using a large dataset of matched father-son pairs in Sweden, we find that intergenerational transmission is very strong at the top, more so for income than for earnings. At the...