Economic homogamy has important implications for gender inequality and for economic inequalities between households. However, the long-term association between spouses’ earnings is not well understood. This study reconceptualizes economic homogamy as a life course process rather than a static state of being that can be adequately captured at a single point in time. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I examine the association between spouses’ earnings trajectories over the course of 30 years of marriage to identify three distinct gender egalitarian earnings patterns among couples. 50 % of couples follow a Dual earner pattern, in which spouses follow similar, stable earnings patterns over time, 6 % of couples are Jointly mobile in that spouses’ earnings vary similarly and 5 % follow an Alternating earner pattern. A large minority of couples follow patterns of long-term specialization, with 34 % of couples following Male breadwinner patterns and 5 % following Female breadwinner patterns. Multivariate analysis reveals that gender egalitarian earnings patterns are stratified by couples’ socio-economic status at marriage: while advantaged couples follow Dual earner patterns comprised of two stable earners, disadvantaged couples follow egalitarian earnings patterns characterized by joint earnings instability. By taking a long-term approach, this study provides insight into the varied ways gender equality in earnings manifests among married couples and reveals an important and understudied dimension of economic homogamy: the concentration of economic stability and instability within couples.

This study examines the evolution in the association between social origins and tertiary educational attainment in Belgium, from post-World War II to the millennium’s onset. For this, we rely on a multidimensional measurement of social origins that accounts for interaction mechanisms between parental class and educational resources. We analyse 13,803 individuals over four birth cohorts. In contrast to previous studies, we find a decline in social inequalities for cohorts born before 1975, followed by a resurgence among those born afterwards. This U-turn in social inequalities of tertiary educational attainment is only observable when social origins are measured multidimensionally. Additionally, we investigate the interaction effects between parental resources, revealing divergent evolutions in accumulation and compensation mechanisms. Our findings underscore the renewed importance of combining parental education with parental social class for generations born after 1975.

Although privately held businesses are central to the economy and society, little is known about how their assets are distributed among the population. To better understand rising and persistent wealth inequalities, this paper describes the household distribution of private business assets in the United States and examines how it has changed over time. Using data from the 1989–2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, we show that the relative number of business owners has remained stagnant at low levels and that assets in privately held firms have become increasingly concentrated. In 2019, the top 1 % of households controlled nearly 80 % of the equity in private businesses, up from about 70 % in the late 1980s. Moreover, we find that these trends appear to be quite general and do not merely reflect dynamics among elites or in specific sectors of the economy. We discuss implications for the organization of the US economy, wealth inequality, and public policy.

While the influence of poverty in childhood on adulthood outcomes has been extensively studied, little is known about how the strength of intergenerational persistence in poverty itself varies across countries. Here we examine the intergenerational persistence of poverty in a comparative analysis of 30 European countries using data from the 2019 ad hoc module of the EU-SILC dataset. We construct proxy measures of poverty in the parental household employing information on the inability to meet basic needs and financial hardship when growing up, together with parental education and occupational social class. The strength of the association between current poverty based on the indicators at the core of the EU’s social inclusion process and these measures of parental poverty is assessed and compared across countries. The cross-country variation in poverty persistence is probed concerning its relationship with the current and past extent of poverty: persistence tends to be stronger where current or parental poverty is higher, analogous to the Great Gatsby Curve relating intergenerational income mobility to income inequality at the country level. Mediation analysis highlights the role of own education as well as occupation in underpinning the observed relationship between current and parental poverty.

Using deepfaked job application videos as a novel experimental treatment, this study analyses the effects of physical attractiveness for men and women on their hypothetical hiring chances. Based on status construction theory, we argue that whether gendered expectations through physical attractiveness translate into better hiring chances depends on the social context. To test this theoretical claim, we conducted a 2×2×2 factorial survey experiment among respondents with personnel responsibilities (N = 493). Using deep-learning techniques, we swap the faces of fictitious male and female candidates in application videos, thus varying gender and physical attractiveness while holding everything else constant. Additionally, we manipulate the occupational context with job advertisements for a male-typed and a female-typed job. Results show that attractive applicants score higher in competence ratings and are more likely to be invited for a job interview than less attractive candidates. However, only men consistently profit from their looks, while women benefit from a beauty premium in the female-typed, but not in the male-typed job. These results strongly support the idea that physical attractiveness works as a status characteristic, triggers gendered expectations, and leads to beauty-based treatment differences. This study suggests that the use of deepfakes is a promising avenue to move inequality research forward.

We examine earnings mobility across three generations in Finland and compare two native groups with equal constitutional rights, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers. Based on register data of the total population, we employ rank-rank regressions to assess the degree to which earnings in men relate to their fathers’ and paternal grandfathers’ earnings. We estimate regressions on the national level and in regions with Swedish-speaking population. The earnings rank of the grandfather is found to play a modest role net of the earnings rank of the father. Earnings mobility is higher in regions where the numerical minority of Swedish speakers is settled, but the two ethnolinguistic groups differ only in the Helsinki capital region, where earnings mobility is higher among the Swedish speakers. Less than one fifth of this ethnolinguistic gradient can be attributed to educational and other observed differences. These findings suggest that, in a geographically concentrated and well-performing ethnolinguistic group, social integration and networks may play a role in providing opportunities independently of parents’ achievements.

Previous research analyzing Western societies reported no gender gap in earnings growth after accounting for initial job allocation, attributing the widening gender gap in mid-career to the impact of family formation. This pattern is often referred to as the “last chapter” of gender inequality, but there is no consensus that this phenomenon is universal or place-specific. The applicability of these findings to non-Western contexts remains unclear. This study examines the gender gap in earnings growth in a non-Western advanced economy, South Korea, net of initial job assignment and factors related to family formation. The 2008–2010 Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey is used and the gender differences in job allocation and family formation are balanced with the application of the inverse probability of treatment weights. The results of individual-fixed effects models show that college-educated women in Korea face lower earnings growth and lower promotion prospects than their male counterparts. The magnitude and mechanisms of this female disadvantage vary across labor market sectors. The implications of these findings are discussed.