The Decline of Intergenerational Mobility in Denmark:

The Decline of Intergenerational Mobility in Denmark:

Returns to Education, Demographic Change, and Labor Market Experience
Martin David Munk - Joint Seminar OSC & MaxPo, 8 February
  • Image wong yu liang, via ShutterstockImage wong yu liang, via Shutterstock

Séminaire scientifique de l'OSC 2018-2019

Séance organisée avec le MaxPo (SCOOPS Seminars)

98, rue de l'Université 75007 Paris - salle Annick Percheron

vendredi 8 février 2019 de 11h30 à 13h

The Decline of Intergenerational Mobility in Denmark: Returns to Education, Demographic Change, and Labor Market Experience

Martin D. Munk, Aalborg University

(research project conducted with David J. Harding, University of California, Berkeley)

Although there is some evidence of declining intergenerational mobility in industrialized countries, the sources of these changes are not well understood. This paper examines changes in intergenerational mobility in Denmark, which has one of the highest levels of intergenerational mobility in the world.
We show that mobility has been declining for both men and women since the late 1950s across the most recent cohorts who are now old enough to measure permanent adult income, and that these changes were concentrated among children born into the middle three-fifths of the income distribution. We examine the sources of this decline by testing hypotheses related demographic processes, returns to education, and work experience.
Our results highlight the importance of both parent and child work experience and family structure in the family of origin among both men and women as well as, to a lesser degree, marital status, assortative mating, and childbearing among women. Although education was an important driver of parent-child income rank associations in each cohort, it played little role in accounting for increases in those associations across cohorts.

Martin D. Munk
Martin David Munk
Professor
The Faculty of Social Science
Department of Political Science
Centre for Comparative Welfare Studies
Aalborg University

 Discussant: Louis-André Vallet (OSC).

Register is mandatory for external audience (bernard.corminboeuf@sciencespo.fr).

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