Marital sorting, household labour supply, and intergenerational mobility across countries

We present comparable evidence on intergenerational earnings mobility for Denmark, Finland, Norway, the UK and the US, with a focus on the role of gender and marital status. We confirm that earnings mobility in the Nordic countries is typically greater than in the US and in the UK, but find that, in contrast to all other groups, for married women mobility is approximately uniform across countries when estimates are based on women's own earnings. Defining offspring outcomes in terms of family earnings, on the other hand, leads to estimates of intergenerational mobility in the Nordic countries which exceed those for the US and the UK for both men and women, single and married. Unlike in the Nordic countries, we find that married women with children and with husbands from affluent backgrounds tend to exhibit reduced labor supply in the US and the UK. In these countries, it is the combination of assortative mating and labor supply responses which weakens the association between married women's own earnings and their parents' earnings

Educational homogamy and assortative mating have not increased

Some economists have argued that assortative mating between men and women has increased over the last several decades, thereby contributing to increased family income inequality. Sociologists have argued that educational homogamy has increased. We clarify the relation between the two and, using both the Current Population Surveys and the decennial Censuses/American Community Survey, show that neither is correct. The former is based on the use of inappropriate statistical techniques. Both are sensitive to how educational categories are chosen. We also find no evidence that the correlation between spouses' potential earnings has changed dramatically.Othe

Income Inequality and Marriage

This study examines the extent to which changes in household formation exacerbated income inequality in the United States during the last two generations. Using a time-varying parameter model, the impact on how marriage decisions, changes in human capital, and fertility choices influence inequality are estimated. The estimation results show that marital sorting evolves over time and positively and increasingly affects the degree of income inequality and intergenerational human capital transmission induces path-dependent income distribution dynamics. This suggests that intrahousehold choices explain a substantial proportion of income distribution dynamics.

Trends in educational assortative marriage in China from 1970 to 2000

This research examines trends in educational assortative marriage in China among first marriages from 1970 to 2000 using data from the 2000 China Population Census and the 2001 Chinese Demographic Reproductive Health Survey. The results reveal decreasing educational homogamy rates from 1970 to 1980. However, the estimated odds of educational homogamy increase substantially between 1980 and 1995 and then grow at a slower pace in the late 1990s. Further, in urban areas, increasing rates of resemblance between spouses occur a decade earlier and at a higher level, compared to rural areas. Overall, the results indicate that senior high school graduates and college graduates in the late 1990s are less likely to marry those with less education than those in the 1970s in modern China.China, educational homogamy, log-linear model

Sibling Correlations and Social Mobility in Latin America

In this paper, social mobility is measured by looking at the extent to which family background determines socioeconomic success. Roughly speaking, social mobility can be measure by means of two distinct types of correlations: intergenerational correlations and sibling correlations.

The Effects of Assortative Mating on Income Inequality: A Decompositional Analysis

Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Survey of Income and Household Costs, this paper explores the effect of changing assortative mating patterns on income inequality. Evidence from theoretical and mathematically calibrated models suggest that assortative mating has distributional implications for measurable traits, which include income. Using a semi-parametric conditional weighted kernel density estimation framework we analyse the effect of assortative mating on the distribution of income in Australia. In controlling for labour force participation, family characteristics, education and other demographic variables, we find some evidence to suggest that assortative mating has had an influence on the increase in income inequality in the 17 years to 2003. The results are robust to several changes in specification

The Impact of Assortative Mating on Income Inequality in Switzerland

Homogamy is one of the possible drivers of income inequality in society. This study analyses the influence of homogamy in partners’ earnings on income inequality in Switzerland using data of the Swiss Household Panel from 1999 to 2015. The first part monitors homogamy in educational levels, parental education, hourly wages and realised yearly earnings using correlation coefficients. The second part estimates the impact of assortative mating on income inequality using counterfactual simulations. By focusing not only on realised earnings but also on hourly wages, we can distinguish between the effect of homogamy from the effects of labour supply adjustments. In addition, we take into account the selection into partnership. Results show a very weak correlation between partners’ realised earnings. The observed Gini coefficient of realised earnings is not different from the Gini in a scenario where partners match independently of their earnings. Two processes explain these results. First, there is relatively little homogamy in hourly wages. Second, adjustments of labour supply to partner’s characteristics have an equalising effect that can offset the impact of homogamy

Intergenerational Mobility and the Informative Content of Surnames

We propose an alternative method for measuring intergenerational mobility. Traditional methods based on panel data provide measurements that are scarce, difficult to compare across countries and almost impossible to get across time. In particular this means that we do not know how intergenerational mobility is correlated with growth, income or the degree of inequality. Our proposal is to measure the informative content of surnames in one census. The more information does the surname have on the income of an individual, the more important is background in determining outcomes; and thus, the less mobility there is. The reason for this is that surnames inform on family relationships because the distribution of surnames is necessarily much skewed. A large percentage of the population is bound to have a very unfrequent surname. For them the partition generated by surnames is very informative on family linkages. First, we develop a model whose endogenous variable is the joint distribution of surnames and income. Then we explore the relationship between mobility and the informative content of surnames. We allow for assortative mating to be a determinant of both. Then, we use our methodology to show that in a large Spanish region the informative content of surnames is large and consistent with the model. We also show that it has increased over time, indicating a substantial drop in the degree of mobility. Finally, using the peculiarities of the Spanish surname convention we show that the degree of assortative mating has also increased over time, in such a manner that might explain the decrease in mobility observed. Our method allows us to provide measures of mobility comparable across time. It should also allow us to study other issues related to inheritance.inheritance, birth-death processes, cross-sectional data, population genetics