Intergenerational Mobility in Britain: Evidence from unemployment patterns

Several papers have examined the intergenerational transmission of well being by looking at the relationship between parents' and children's income. However, by concentrating on those who are working these studies exclude some of the very poorest in society, the long-term unemployed. In this paper we extend the empirical work on intergenerational welfare in the U.K by looking at the links between fathers' and sons' unemployment histories. Using an approach which takes account of both incidence and intensity of son's unemployment we provide further evidence showing that parental background is an important determinant of a child's future welfare. A son whose father was unemployed 20 years earlier is almost twice as likely to be unemployed as a son whose father was not unemployed. Furthermore this dependency remains significant after controlling for a range of sons characteristics including education, ability and family composition.