The transmission of inequality across multiple generations : testing recent theories with evidence from Germany
Date
02/03/2018Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper shows that across multiple generations, the persistence of occupational and educational attainment in Germany is larger than estimates from two generations suggest. We consider two recent interpretations. First, we assess Gregory Clark’s hypotheses that the true rate of intergenerational persistence is higher than the observed rate, as high as 0.75, and time-invariant. Our evidence supports the first but not the other two hypotheses. Second, we test for independent effects of grandparents. We show that the coefficient on grandparent status is positive in a wide class of Markovian models, and present evidence against its causal interpretation.
Citation
Braun , S T & Stuhler , J 2018 , ' The transmission of inequality across multiple generations : testing recent theories with evidence from Germany ' , The Economic Journal , vol. 128 , no. 609 , pp. 576-611 . https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12453
Publication
The Economic Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0013-0133Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2016, Royal Economic Society. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12453
Description
Sebastian Braun gratefully acknowledges funding by the Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung. Jan Stuhler gratefully acknowledges support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain, MDM 2014-0431 and ECO2014-55858-P) and Comunidad de Madrid (MadEco-CM S2015/HUM-3444).Collections
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