Big ideas: intergenerational mobility

Jo Blanden traces the evolution of CEP research on social mobility and its interaction with policy debate.

Cross-generation correlations of union status for young people in Britain.

This paper investigates whether young people whose fathers are union members are themselves more likely to join a union. We find that young people with unionized fathers are twice as likely to be unionized as those with non-union fathers and that this rises to three times higher for those whose fathers are active in the union. This supports the idea that socialization within the family plays a role in encouraging union membership. It is not the case that the cross-generation correlations we observe are driven by common within-family characteristics (like occupation, industry and political persuasion) that are strongly related to union membership.

Family Income and Educational Attainment: A Review of Approaches and Evidence for Britain

It is widely recognised that, on average, children from poorer backgrounds have worse educational outcomes than their better off peers. There is less evidence on how this relationship has changed over time and, indeed, what exactly leads to these inequalities. In this paper we demonstrate that the correlation between family background (as measured by family income) and educational attainment has been rising between children born in the late 1950s and those born two decades later. The remainder of the paper is spent considering the extent to which these associations are due to the causal effects of income rather than the result of other dimensions of family background. We review the approaches taken to answering this question, drawing mainly in the US literature, and then present our own evidence from the UK, discussing the plausible range for the true impact of income on education. Our results indicate that income has a causal relationship with educational attainment.Education, Inequality

Cross-Generation Correlations of Union Status For Young People in Britain

In this paper we investigate whether young people whose fathers are union members are themselves more likely to join a union. The work builds upon a large social science literature on intergenerational mobility that, to ourknowledge, has not been applied to industrial relations questions. The paper asks questions and provides evidence from British longitudinal data on several issues to do with the cross-generation transmission of union status:i) We first calculate odds ratios, as often used in the literature on social mobility, to look at empirical connections between the union status of young people and their fathers. We calculate relative risk ratios that measure the relative chances that a child of a unionized father is unionized as compared to the relative chances of the child of a non-union father being unionized. This relative risk ratio is of the order of 2, showing that young people with unionized fathers are twice as likely to be unionized as those with non-union fathers. ii) The relative risk ratio is higher, at over 3, for young people with fathers who report themselves as being active in a union. To the extent that active in a union fathers are more likely to 'spread the word' about unions to their offspring, this higher relative risk ratio supports the idea that the socialization within the family during the formative years passes on positive knowledge about unions to children of unionized parents making them more likely to join a union. iii) The intergenerational correlation of union status has not reduced over time. Despite a widening of the union membership gap between older and younger workers, relative risk ratios calculated from early 1980s data are no larger than those from the 1990s. iv) The cross-generation correlation is not driven by common within-family characteristics (like occupation, industry and political persuasion) that are strongly related to union status in the data.young people, union member,union at work,relative risk ratio,intergenerational links

Social mobility matters, and government can affect the mechanisms which promote it

In response to arguments that the ‘social mobility problem’ has been overstated and that social mobility as a policy aim is futile, Jo Blanden reviews research that her and colleagues have conducted into intergenerational mobility in the UK. She argues that there is good evidence that relative intergenerational income mobility declined over time in the UK and that governments can indeed affect the mechanisms which can promote social mobility. To do so they must take a close look at the overall shape of society

Intergenerational persistence in income and social class : The impact of within-group inequality

Family income is found to be more closely related to sons’ earnings for a cohort born in 1970 compared to one born in 1958. This result is in stark contrast to the finding on the basis of social class; intergenerational mobility for this outcome is found to be unchanged. Our aim here is to explore the reason for this divergence. We derive a formal framework which relates mobility as measured by family income/earnings to mobility as measured by social class. Building on this framework we then test a number of alternative hypotheses to explain the difference between the trends. We find evidence of an increase in the intergenerational persistence of the permanent component of income that is unrelated to social class. We reject the hypothesis that the observed decline in income mobility is a consequence of the poor measurement of permanent family income in the 1958 cohort

Accounting for Intergenerational Income Persistence: Noncognitive Skills, Ability and Education

We analyse in detail the factors that lead to intergenerational persistence among sons, where this is measured as the association between childhood family income and later adult earnings. We seek to account for the level of income persistence in the 1970 BCS cohort and also to explore the decline in mobility in the UK between the 1958 NCDS cohort and the 1970 cohort. The mediating factors considered are cognitive skills, noncognitive traits, educational attainment and labour market attachment. Changes in the relationships between these variables, parental income and earnings are able to explain over 80% of the rise in intergenerational persistence across the cohorts.intergenerational mobility, children, skills

Explaining Intergenerational Income Persistence: Non-cognitive Skills, Ability and Education

The recent literature on intergenerational mobility in the UK has been focused on measuring the level and change in the relationship between parental income and children’s earnings as adults among recent cohorts. This paper is the first to analyse in detail the factors that generate these links. The paper seeks to account for the level of income persistence in the 1970 BCS cohort and also to explore the decline in mobility in the UK between the 1958 NCDS cohort and the 1970 cohort. The mediating factors considered are childhood health, cognitive skills, non-cognitive traits, educational attainment and labour market attachment. We find that these variables together explain slightly more than half of the intergenerational link for men. Changes in the relationships between these variables, parental income and earnings are able to explain three quarters of the rise in intergenerational persistence across the cohorts. The increased persistence in the second cohort comes from an increased influence of parental income in determining educational attainment, especially higher education, and labour market attachment. It is also clear that the stronger relationship between parental income and education comes in part through the growing relationship between parental income and the non-cognitive characteristics that influence education outcomes.Intergenerational Mobility, Earnings, Family Income, Education

Intergenerational Persistence in Income and Social Class: The Impact of Increased Inequality

Sociologists and economists reach quite different conclusions about how intergenerational mobility in the UK compares for those growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Persistence in social class is found to be unchanged while family income is found to be more closely related to sons’ earnings for those born in 1970 compared to those born in the 1958. We investigate the reasons for the contrast and find that they are not due to methodological differences or data quality. Rather, they are explained by the increased importance of differences in income within social class for sons’ earnings in the second cohort. When economists measure intergenerational mobility their ideal is to see how permanent income is transmitted across generations. Our investigations show that the importance of within-social class differences in income mean that a single measure of income is a better predictor of permanent income status than fathers’ social class. We would not, therefore, expect the results for changes in intergenerational mobility based on income and social class to necessarily coincide.Intergenerational mobility, Earnings, social class