Estimates of intergenerational economic mobility that use point in time measures of income and earnings suffer from lifecycle and attenuation bias. We consider these issues for the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and British Cohort Study (BCS) for the first time, highlighting how common...

It is widely believed that countries with greater levels of income inequality also have lower levels of intergenerational mobility. This relationship, known as the Great Gatsby Curve (GGC), has been prominently cited by high-ranking public policy makers, best-selling authors and Nobel Prize...

Previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have typically focused at on estimating persistence across generations at the mean of the distribution of sons' earnings. Here, we use the relatively new unconditional quantile regression (UQR) technique to consider how the association...

The paper analyzes the relationship between career path characteristics of civil servants and their career success. Following a description of the institutional setting and some qualitative evidence on typical paths to the top, we use data that follows the careers of all Swedish civil servants...

There is currently a debate in policy circles about access to "the upper echelons of power" (Sir John Major, ex Prime Minister, 2013). This research seeks to understand the relationship between family background and early access to top occupations. We find that privately educated graduates are a...

A number of studies have explored the link between family background and children's achievement in a cross-national context. A common finding is that there is a stronger association in England than other parts of the developed world. Rather less attention has been paid, however, to England's...

The association between household income and university entry is a matter of clear academic and policy interest. This paper sheds new light on the matter using the LSYPE, a recent longitudinal survey from England. While those in the top income quintile group are more likely than those in the...

The link between family background and labour market outcomes is an issue of great academic, social and political concern. It is frequently claimed that such intergenerational associations are stronger in Britain than other countries. But is this really true? I investigate this issue by...

The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) has the potential to be an important new resource for addressing research questions regarding access to Higher Education. This paper outlines the data available in the LSYPE and assesses its quality, particularly relative to other...

We review the empirical literature that estimates the causal effect of parent’s schooling on child’s schooling, and conclude that estimates differ across studies. We then consider three explanations for why this is: (a) idiosyncratic differences in data sets; (b) differences in remaining...