Choosing the Right Parents: Changes in the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality Between the 1970s and the early 1990s

David Levine

Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley

Abstract: This paper uses the General Social survey and the comparison between the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men and of Youth to measure how returns to young men's family background have changed from the late 1970's to the late 1980's and early 1990's. Coming from a wealthy family and having a well-educated father who worked in a high-prestige occupation were much more powerful predictors of a young man's success in the later period. In contrast, maternal education was less important in determining a young man's income and educational attainment. Rising returns to education coupled with a constant relation between family background and education explains most of the rising importance of family background.

Date: 1999-11-19
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9r45b10r.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Choosing the right parents: changes in the intergenerational transmission of inequality between 1980 and the early 1990s (2002)
Working Paper: Choosing the Right Parents: Changes in the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality Between the 1970s and the Early 1990s (1999)
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:cdl:indrel:qt9r45b10r

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().