Inequality of Opportunity in Times of Rising Global Inequality: USA vs. Switzerland

Bühler, Jonas (), Jonathan Davis (), Häner-Müller, Melanie (), Bhashkar Mazumder () and Christoph Schaltegger
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Bühler, Jonas: Institute for Swiss Economic Policy at the University of Lucerne
Jonathan Davis: University of Oregon
Häner-Müller, Melanie: Institute for Swiss Economic Policy at the University of Lucerne
Bhashkar Mazumder: University of California, Irvine
Christoph Schaltegger: Institute for Swiss Economic Policy at the University of Lucerne

No 18764, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We provide a comparative analysis of inequality of opportunity for children’s future success in Switzerland and the United States during an era of rising global inequality. Leveraging Swiss administrative earnings data and U.S. survey data, we estimate sibling correlations for cohorts entering the labor market in the early 1970s and early 1980s in the two countries. We find a sharp rise in sibling correlations and income inequality in the United States during the 1980s similar to Davis & Mazumder (2026) who study intergenerational income mobility. However, we find that both inequality and inequality of opportunity in Switzerland remained remarkably stable. Sibling correlations in long-run income consistently hovered below 15% across both cohorts in Switzerland, whereas in the United States they nearly doubled, from 15.4% to 30.6%. These findings thus position Switzerland as a salient counterfactual to the U.S. case.

Keywords: inequality of opportunity; income inequality; social mobility; time trends; sibling correlation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I30 J12 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
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