How Important Is the Family?: Evidence from Sibling Correlations in Permanent Earnings in the US, Germany and Denmark

Daniel Schnitzlein

No 365, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: This paper is the first to analyze intergenerational economic mobility based on sibling correlations in permanent earnings in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and the US. The main findings are as follows: the importance of family and community background in Germany is higher than in Denmark and comparable to that in the US. This holds true for brothers and sisters. In Denmark 20 percent of the inequality in permanent earnings can be attributed to family and community factors shared by brothers while the corresponding estimates are 43 percent in Germany and 45 percent in the US. For sisters the estimates are 19 percent for Denmark, 39 percent for Germany and 29 percent for the US. This ranking is shown to be robust against alternative approaches.

Keywords: Sibling correlations; intergenerational mobility; inequality; REML (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 p.
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.369678.de/diw_sp0365.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How important is the family? Evidence from sibling correlations in permanent earnings in the USA, Germany, and Denmark (2014)
Journal Article: How Important Is the Family? Evidence from Sibling Correlations in Permanent Earnings in the USA, Germany, and Denmark (2014)
Working Paper: How important is the family? Evidence from sibling correlations in permanent earnings in the US, Germany and Denmark (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp365

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