Welfare Regimes and Intergenerational Social Mobility: An Institutional Explanation of the Great Gatsby Curve

Ke Meng () and Shouhao Li ()
Additional contact information
Ke Meng: Tsinghua University
Shouhao Li: Tsinghua University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2023, vol. 165, issue 1, No 15, 355-375

Abstract: Abstract Evidence shows that economic advantages and disadvantages tend to be hereditary, generating a positive association between income inequality and intergenerational immobility. This relationship, “the Great Gatsby Curve,” is explained in this article in relation to welfare regimes. Compared to Liberal and Nordic welfare regimes, Conservative welfare regime generates the highest level of intergenerational immobility. Multilevel analysis of data from International Social Survey Programme (ISSP2009) supports that Conservative regime is the strongest to keep the influence of parental backgrounds on children’s wealth which is the key to determine children’s socio-economic status. These findings, combined with the fact that the conservative welfare regime generates a medium-high level of economic inequality, explains why income inequality is positively and concavely correlated with intergenerational immobility.

Keywords: Welfare state; Intergenerational mobility; Inequality; Human capital; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-022-03017-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:165:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-022-03017-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-022-03017-1

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().