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Mobility Regimes and Parental Wealth: The United States, Germany, and Sweden in Comparison

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  • Fabian T. Pfeffer
  • Martin Hällsten

Abstract

We study the role of parental wealth for children's educational and occupational outcomes across three types of welfare states and outline a theoretical model that assumes parental wealth to impact offspring's attainment through two mechanisms, wealth's purchasing function and its insurance function. We argue that welfare states can limit the purchasing function of wealth, for instance by providing free education and generous social benefits, yet none of the welfare states examined here provides a functional equivalent to the insurance against adverse outcomes afforded by parental wealth. Our empirical evidence of substantial associations between parental wealth and children's educational success and social mobility in three nations that are marked by large institutional differences is in line with this interpretation and helps us re-examine and extend existing typologies of mobility regimes.

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  • Fabian T. Pfeffer & Martin Hällsten, 2012. "Mobility Regimes and Parental Wealth: The United States, Germany, and Sweden in Comparison," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 500, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp500
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    Cited by:

    1. Louis Chauvel & Eyal Bar-Haim & Anne Hartung & Emily Murphy, 2021. "Rewealthization in 21st Century Western Countries: The Defining Trend of the Socioeconomic Squeeze of the Middle Class," LIS Working papers 821, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Lykke E. Andersen & Augustus Griffin & Justus J. Krause & Gabriel Orduña Montekio, 2017. "Measuring Equality of Opportunity in Early Childhood: A methodological proposal using Demographic and Health Surveys," Development Research Working Paper Series 04/2017, Institute for Advanced Development Studies.
    3. Trinh, Nhat An & Lersch, Philipp M. & Schunck, Reinhard, 2023. "Dynamics of Wealth Homogamy in Couples," OSF Preprints mxhcp, Center for Open Science.
    4. Fabian T. Pfeffer, 2018. "Growing Wealth Gaps in Education," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(3), pages 1033-1068, June.
    5. Eleni Karagiannaki, 2017. "The effect of parental wealth on children’s outcomes in early adulthood," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(3), pages 217-243, September.
    6. Eleni Karagiannaki, 2017. "The effect of parental wealth on children’s outcomes in early adulthood," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(3), pages 217-243, September.

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