Egalitarianism under Pressure: Toward Lower Economic Mobility in the Knowledge Economy?

Simen Markussen and Knut Røed ()

No 10664, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Based on complete population data, with the exact same definitions of family class background and economic outcomes for a large number of birth cohorts, we examine post-war trends in intergenerational economic mobility in Norway. Despite only mild fluctuations in standard rank-based summary statistics, we show that men and women born into the lowest parts of the parental earnings rank distribution have fallen considerably behind in terms of several quality-of-life outcomes, such as earnings rank, earnings share, employment propensity, educational attainment, and the establishment of a family. In particular, the prime-age employment rates of lower class sons have declined spectacularly, both because their rank outcomes have deteriorated and because the lowest ranks to an increasing extent have become associated with non-employment rather than low-wage employment. We provide suggestive evidence that higher educational requirements in the labor market has increased the importance of parental encouragement and support and thus enlarged the handicap of being born into a less resourceful family. There is no evidence whatsoever of a relative decline in the lower classes' cognitive abilities.

Keywords: inequality; intergenerational mobility; cognitive ability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Forthcoming - revised version published as 'Economic Mobility under Pressure' in: Journal of the European Economic Association, 2020, 18 (4), 1844–1885,

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10664.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp10664

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().