IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bri/cmpowp/08-195.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intergenerational Persistence in Income and Social Class: The Impact of Increased Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Jo Blanden
  • Paul Gregg
  • Lindsey Macmillan

Abstract

Sociologists and economists reach quite different conclusions about how intergenerational mobility in the UK compares for those growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Persistence in social class is found to be unchanged while family income is found to be more closely related to sons’ earnings for those born in 1970 compared to those born in the 1958. We investigate the reasons for the contrast and find that they are not due to methodological differences or data quality. Rather, they are explained by the increased importance of differences in income within social class for sons’ earnings in the second cohort. When economists measure intergenerational mobility their ideal is to see how permanent income is transmitted across generations. Our investigations show that the importance of within-social class differences in income mean that a single measure of income is a better predictor of permanent income status than fathers’ social class. We would not, therefore, expect the results for changes in intergenerational mobility based on income and social class to necessarily coincide.

Suggested Citation

  • Jo Blanden & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2008. "Intergenerational Persistence in Income and Social Class: The Impact of Increased Inequality," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 08/195, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    • Handle: RePEc:bri:cmpowp:08/195
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2008/wp195.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicoletti Cheti & Ermisch John F, 2008. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility: Changes across Cohorts in Britain," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-38, January.
    2. Gary S. Becker & Nigel Tomes, 1994. "Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Anders Björklund & Markus Jäntti, 2000. "Intergenerational mobility of socio-economic status in comparative perspective," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 26, pages 3-32.
    4. Jo Blanden & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2007. "Accounting for Intergenerational Income Persistence: Noncognitive Skills, Ability and Education," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(519), pages 43-60, March.
    5. Amanda Gosling & Stephen Machin & Costas Meghir, 2000. "The Changing Distribution of Male Wages in the U.K," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 635-666.
    6. Johnson, Paul & Webb, Steven, 1993. "Explaining the Growth in UK Income Inequality: 1979-1988," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(417), pages 429-435, March.
    7. Corak,Miles (ed.), 2004. "Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521827607, January.
    8. Singh, S K & Maddala, G S, 1976. "A Function for Size Distribution of Incomes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(5), pages 963-970, September.
    9. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    10. Nathan D. Grawe, 2004. "The 3‐day Week of 1974 and Earnings Data Reliability in the Family Expenditure Survey and the National Child Development Study," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 66(4), pages 567-579, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xu Sun & Xiaolu Lei & Baisen Liu, 2021. "Mobility Divergence in China? Complete Comparisons of Social Class Mobility and Income Mobility," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 687-709, January.
    2. Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2009. "Family Income and Education in the Next Generation: Exploring income gradients in education for current cohorts of youth," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 09/223, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2009. "Family Income and Education in the Next Generation: Exploring income gradients in education for current cohorts of youth," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 09/223, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    2. Erikson, Robert & Goldthorpe, John H., 2009. "Income and Class Mobility Between Generations in Great Britain: The Problem of Divergent Findings from the Data-sets of Birth Cohort Studies," Working Paper Series 4/2009, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    3. Ben-Halima, B. & Chusseau, N. & Hellier, J., 2014. "Skill premia and intergenerational education mobility: The French case," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 50-64.
    4. Raaum Oddbjørn & Bratsberg Bernt & Røed Knut & Österbacka Eva & Eriksson Tor & Jäntti Markus & Naylor Robin A, 2008. "Marital Sorting, Household Labor Supply, and Intergenerational Earnings Mobility across Countries," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-49, January.
    5. Jo Blanden & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2010. "Intergenerational Persistence in Income and Social Class: The Impact of Within-Group Inequality," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 10/230, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    6. Blanden, Jo, 2009. "How much can we learn from international comparisons of intergenerational mobility?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28283, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan & Claudia Vittori, 2015. "Nonlinear Estimation of Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility and the Role of Education," DoQSS Working Papers 15-03, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    8. Anna Christina D'Addio, 2007. "Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage: Mobility or Immobility Across Generations?," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 52, OECD Publishing.
    9. Chris Belfield & Claire Crawford & Ellen Greaves & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2017. "Intergenerational income persistence within families," IFS Working Papers W17/11, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    10. Bernt Bratsberg & Knut Røed & Oddbjørn Raaum & Robin Naylor & Markus Ja¨ntti & Tor Eriksson & Eva O¨sterbacka, 2007. "Nonlinearities in Intergenerational Earnings Mobility: Consequences for Cross-Country Comparisons," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(519), pages 72-92, March.
    11. B. Ben Halima & N. Chusseau & J. Hellier, 2013. "Skill Premia and Intergenerational Skill Transmission: The French Case," Working Papers 285, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    12. Elise S. Brezis & Joël Hellier, 2013. "Social Mobility at the Top: Why Are Elites Self-Reproducing?," Working Papers 2013-12, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    13. Irene Brunetti & Davide Fiaschi, 2015. "Occupational Mobility across Generations: a Theoretical Model with an Application to Italy," Discussion Papers 2015/205, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    14. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    15. Bertha Rohenkohl, 2019. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the UK:New evidence using the BHPS and Understanding Society," Working Papers 2019017, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    16. Hellier, Joël, 2017. "Stratified higher education,social mobility at the top and efficiency: The case of the French ‘Grandes écoles’," MPRA Paper 76724, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. María Cervini-Plá, 2013. "Exploring the Sources of Earnings Transmission in Spain," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 204(1), pages 45-66, March.
    18. Florencia Torche, 2015. "Analyses of Intergenerational Mobility," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 37-62, January.
    19. María Cervini-Plá, 2015. "Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility in Spain," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 812-828, December.
    20. Abdurrahman Aydemir & Wen-Hao Chen & Miles Corak, 2009. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility among the Children of Canadian Immigrants," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(2), pages 377-397, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intergenerational mobility; Earnings; social class;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bri:cmpowp:08/195. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmbriuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.