Like Mother, like Child? The Rise of Women's Intergenerational Income Persistence in Sweden and the United States

Gunnar Brandén, Martin Nybom and Kelly Vosters

No 16152, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We show how intergenerational mobility has evolved over time in Sweden and the United States since 1985, focusing on prime-age labor incomes of both men and women. Income persistence involving women (daughters and/or mothers) has risen substantially over recent decades in both Sweden and the US, while the more predominantly studied father-son measures remained roughly stable. Interestingly, mother-son and mother-daughter persistence levels are very similar as they rise through the sample period, also to nearly the same levels in both countries, contrary to well-established elevated levels of persistence in the US relative to Sweden. We develop a model to quantify the relative roles of parent human capital, employment, and (residual) income, as well as assortative mating. Despite very similar trends and levels for mothers in the US and Sweden, we find substantial differences in the roles of employment and assortative mating over time, consistent with the staggered timing in women's spike in labor force attachment. Parental assortative mating is also an important factor in both countries, though negative sorting on (residual) income in the US negates the upward influence of positive human capital sorting, lending to the similar cross-country levels of mother-child persistence.

Keywords: intergenerational mobility; gender; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J16 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Forthcoming - forthcoming in: Journal of Labor Economics

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16152.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:dp16152

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 ().