Switzer-Land of Opportunity:Intergenerational Income Mobility in the Land of Vocational Education

Patrick Chuard and Veronica Grassi

No 2011, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: This paper documents intergenerational income mobility in Switzerland. We use a unique administrative data set which links the universe of labor incomes since 1982 over generations and is matched to census and survey data. We find that relative income mobility in terms of rank-rank slope (0.15) is substantially higher than in the US and even higher than in Sweden. At the same time, we find that (academic) educational mobility is low. This shows that high income mobility can be achieved even without high educational mobility. However, to reach the top from the bottom («American Dream»), academic education is still key: Children from the bottom quintile who went to gymnasium or got a master's degree are more likely to reach the top quintile compared to their peers in the vocational education track. Looking at regional variation in mobility, we find lower absolute, but higher relative mobility in French- and Italiancompared to German-speaking areas.

Keywords: Social mobility; intergenerational income mobility; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H31 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:econwp:2020:11

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