Intergenerational Correlation Research Articles

Intergenerational Mobility of Housework Time in the United Kingdom

This paper analyzes the relationship between parents' time devoted to housework and the time devoted to housework by their children. Using data from the Multinational Time Use Study for the UK, we find positive intergenerational correlations in housework for both parents, indicating that the more time parents devote to housework, the more time their children will devote to housework. However, when endogeneity of the uses of time are considered using the British Household Panel Survey, we find that only fathers' housework time appears to have a statistically significant effect. The IV estimates fully support the FE estimates and suggest that father's housework induced by his partner's non-traditional gender role attitudes towards domestic division of labour and her actual labour supply in the previous wave, has a large and significant effect on children's housework time. Our results contribute to the field of intergenerational mobility of behaviors.

Less Equal and Less Mobile: Evidence of a Decline in Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States

We use PSID data to 2008 to consider changes in the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) of income in fifteen successive ten-year cohort-groups of sons aged 36-45 between 1997 and 2011. Regressing sons’ estimated lifetime income on fathers’ income within each group, we obtain fifteen IGE estimates, which exhibit a significant rising trend, as do intergenerational correlations and rank correlations. The Gini coefficient of sons’ lifetime income within these groups exhibits a correlation of 0.71 with our IGE estimates, leading us to conclude that as the United States has become economically less equal in recent years it has also become less mobile.

Exploring the intergenerational persistence of mental health: Evidence from three generations

This paper uses data from the 1970 British Cohort Study to quantify the intergenerational persistence of mental health, and the long-run economic costs associated with poor parental mental health. We find a strong and significant intergenerational correlation that is robust to different covariate sets, sample restrictions, model specifications and potential endogeneity. Importantly, the intergenerational persistence is economically relevant, with maternal mental health associated with lasting effects on the child's educational attainment, future household income and the probability of having criminal convictions. These results do not disappear after controlling for children's own childhood and adulthood mental health.

Intergenerational correlation of labor market outcomes

This paper contributes to the relatively limited literature on the correlation of labor market outcomes of parents and their children. This literature is relevant to the larger literature on intergenerational income mobility since correlation in intergenerational labor market outcomes is one of the potential factors contributing to the intergenerational correlation of permanent incomes. In this paper, we consider the time spent in unemployment by both sons and daughters, while accounting for the potential endogeneity of education. Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia data, we find evidence of a positive correlation of labor market outcomes between fathers and sons and, to a lesser extent, between mothers and daughters. In addition, the results reveal a significant relationship between parents’ and children’s education levels, indicating that there is an indirect association of parental education with their children’s labor market outcomes through education.

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Great Britain and the United States Since 1850: Comment

We reanalyze Long and Ferrie's data. We find that the association of occupational status across generations was quite similar over time and place. Two significant differences were: (i) American farms in 1880 were far more open to men who had nonfarm backgrounds than were American farms in 1973 or British farms in either century; (ii) of the four cases, the intergenerational correlation was strongest in Britain in 1881. Structural mobility related to, among other things, economic growth and occupational differentiation, affected mobility most in 1970s America. (JEL J62, N31, N32, N33, N34)

Born to be wide? Exploring correlations in mother and adolescent body mass index

The channels contributing to the intergenerational correlation in body mass are not well understood. A novel decomposition approach from quantitative genetics is used to estimate the contribution of maternal characteristics, household income, and adolescent behaviours on the intergenerational correlation in BMI. The analysis uses data on mothers and their adolescent children from the British Household Panel Survey. The overall intergenerational correlation in BMI is 0.25. Maternal educational attainment and adolescent participation in daily physical activity are the largest contributing factors to the intergenerational correlation in BMI. Maternal employment and high daily television viewing by the adolescent are also contributing factors. Overall, observable characteristics explain 11.2% of the intergenerational correlation in BMI.

Inequality in Intergenerational Mobility of Education in China

AbstractThis paper investigates trends in intergenerational patterns of educational attainment of those born in China between 1941 and 1990. Employing the 2008 Rural–Urban Migration in China and Indonesia Survey, we find that intergenerational correlation is lower in rural and migrant than in urban populations. The higher mobility observed in rural and migrant populations stems from the fact that the majority of these children complete only junior high school, with some children in the youngest cohorts moving down the education ladder relative to their parents. In contrast, urban children seem to at least maintain their parents’ education level. The persistence of intergenerational transmission of education at high levels in urban areas combined with some mobility, upward or downward, in rural areas is likely to aggravate China's rural–urban disparity. Policies should focus more on the underlying gaps in education opportunities and the improvement in education of the rural and migrant populations.

Book Reviews

Bhash Mazumder of Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reviews, “Heredity, Family, and Inequality: A Critique of Social Sciences” by Michael Beenstock. The EconLit Abstract of this book begins: “Explores the roles of heredity, family, and social environment in the determination of outcomes among humans, including anthropometric, psychological, behavioral, and economic outcomes. Discusses the apple and the tree—Francis Galton revisited; correlation within the family; explaining the intergenerational and sibling correlations; inequality, diversity, and family; empirical methodology; empirical knowledge on the causes of correlations within the family; where we go from here; statistics; parenting theory and child behavior; and empirical methodology. Beenstock is Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Bibliography; index.”

The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills during Adolescence and Young Adulthood

This study examines cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their transmission from parents to children as one potential candidate to explain the intergenerational link of socio-economic status. Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we contrast the impact of parental cognitive abilities (fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence) and personality traits (Big Five, locus of control) on their adolescent and young adult children's traits with the effects of parental background and childhood environment. While for both age groups intelligence and personal traits were found to be transmitted from parents to their children, there are large discrepancies with respect to the age group and the type of skill. The intergenerational transmission effect was found to be relatively small for adolescent children, with correlations between 0.12 and 0.24, whereas the parent-child correlation in the sample of adult children was between 0.19 and 0.27 for non-cognitive skills, and up to 0.56 for cognitive skills. Thus, the skill gradient increases with the age of the child. Furthermore, the skill transmission effects are virtually unchanged by controlling for childhood environment or parental education, suggesting that the socio-economic status of the family does not play a mediating role in the intergenerational transmission of intelligence and personality traits. The finding that non-cognitive skills are not as strongly transmitted as cognitive skills, suggests that there is more room for external (non-parental) influences in the formation of personal traits. Hence, it is more promising for policy makers to focus on shaping children's non-cognitive skills to promote intergenerational mobility. Intergenerational correlations of cognitive skills in Germany are roughly the same or slightly stronger than those found by previous studies for other countries with different institutional settings. Intergenerational correlations of non-cognitive skills revealed for Germany seem to be considerably higher than the ones found for the U.S. Hence, skill transmission does not seem to be able to explain cross-country differences in socio-economic mobility.

Education Mobility - An Agent Based Approach

In this paper I develop a model to reproduce the phenomenon of high intergenerational correlations in education particularly observed in Latin American Countries. The model is based on empirical evidence and implemented through agent based modeling techniques. The effect of conditional cash transfer programs on educational mobility is then analyzed. The results suggest that conditional cash transfer program can substantially increase intergenerational mobility in education. I find that using parental education as eligibility criterion and adapting the subsidies to the income level can improve the efficiency of a program in increasing educational mobility as compared to a purely income based program.

Intergenerational Transmission of Self-Employed Status in the Informal Sector: A Constrained Choice or Better Income Prospects? Evidence from Seven West African Countries

This paper aims at highlighting the debate on firm heterogeneity in the informal sector by testing whether entrepreneurial familial background impacts informal businesses outcomes in the West African context. In the USA, a literature aiming at understanding the high intergenerational correlation of the self-employed status shows that children of self-employed have better business performance than children of wage earners. However, it is not obvious that this result could be generalised to developing countries. Using 1-2-3 surveys collected in the commercial capitals of seven West African countries in 2001–02, this paper shows that children of self-employed, who own an informal business, do not have better business outcomes than children of wage earners, except when they choose a familial tradition in the same sector of activity. Thus, in the West African context, having a self-employed father seems not sufficient for the transmission of valuable skills and does not provide any advantage in terms of value added or sales if the activity is different from that of the father. On the other hand, informal entrepreneurs who have chosen a specific enterprise based on familial tradition have a competitive advantage. Their competitive advantage is partly explained by the transmission of enterprise-specific human capital, acquired through experiences in the same type of activity and by the transmission of social capital that guarantees a better clientele and a reputation.

Parental background and university dropout in Italy

Using longitudinal data drawn from the European Community Household Panel, this paper examines Italian university entry and dropout rates in the context of specific parental and family characteristics. We are interested in the effects of the household’s cultural and financial conditions on shaping investment in tertiary education and its failure, at the national level. Our estimates confirm the persistence of intergenerational correlations related to education. Cultural constraints affect outcomes—enrolment in and withdrawal from tertiary education; low income negatively affects the transition from high school to college. Our results suggest that a comprehensive policy intervention is needed to ensure optimal human capital investment.

Intergenerational fertility correlations in contemporary developing counties

To estimate the magnitude of intergenerational continuities in total and effective fertility among women in a group of 46 contemporary developing countries. Information collected from 93,000 women aged 45-49 for estimation of maternal mortality in the demographic and health surveys (DHS) program is analyzed using Pearson product moment intergenerational fertility correlations. A positive but usually small intergenerational correlation is found for both completed fertility (CFS, total number of children born) and effective fertility (EFS, number of children surviving to age of reproduction). Although the developing countries are mainly located in sub-Saharan Africa, a similar pattern appears to hold for the Asian and Latin American countries included. Women in the second generation with no education have a stronger relationship with their parents' fertility than women with some education. The relationship is also stronger in rural than in urban areas and in countries with lower levels of development. Intergenerational correlations of completed fertility in both generations are marginally stronger than for effective fertility largely because the number of a woman's total sibs is more strongly related to her subsequent childbearing than her number of adult sibs. Values of intergenerational correlations for these countries are similar to published values for a number of Western pretransitional populations, but well below values in contemporary developed societies.

The Impact of Fathers' Job Loss during the Recession of the 1980s on their Children's Educational Attainment and Labour Market Outcomes*

AbstractThe research on intergenerational correlations in outcomes is increasingly moving from measurement into assessment of causal transmission mechanisms. This paper analyses the causal impact of fathers' job loss on their children's educational attainment and later economic outcomes. To do so, we isolate the effect of job loss associated with major industry contractions, mainly in manufacturing, during the recession of the 1980s by mapping industry‐level employment change data from 1980 to 1983 into the British Cohort Study (BCS). Children with fathers who were identified as being displaced did significantly worse in terms of their GCSE attainment than those with non‐displaced fathers. A child with a displaced father obtained, on average, 18 grade points lower or half a GCSE at grades A*–C less than their otherwise‐identical counterparts, the equivalent of about 2 per cent lower wages as an adult. There is also a small effect of fathers' displacement on the early labour market attachment of children, but no direct impact on their earnings at age 30/34. This does not mean that the impact of job loss will not affect social mobility. Those with lower income, education and social class were most affected by job losses and there is a direct effect on education and youth unemployment, which we know to be drivers of later earnings. This suggests that the recent recession may have significant long‐term consequences for the children of those who have lost their jobs.

Impact of fertility transmission and other sociodemographic factors on reproductive success and coalescent trees

Summary Fertility transmission (FT) is a phenomenon with a cultural and/or genetic basis, whereby a positive correlation exists between the number of offspring of an individual and that of his/her parents. Theoretical studies using a haploid individual-based model have shown that FT increases the variance and intergenerational correlation in reproductive success and results in an imbalance in the coalescent tree of sampled genes. This phenomenon has been documented in several demographic studies conducted on the correlation in fertility between generations, or through the reconstruction of the genealogical trees of mitochondrial DNA sequences. However, as mtDNA is a single locus, potentially subject to other forces (e.g. natural selection), it is of interest to extend the theory of FT to nuclear loci. We show that because random mating between individuals leads to a mixing of their fertility profiles, FT in these cases will have less influence on the variance and intergenerational correlation of reproductive success. This, in turn, results in less impact on the shape of the coalescent trees. Nevertheless, in the presence of FT, high heterogeneity in reproductive success and homogamy for family size will increase the imbalance in the coalescent tree. Thus, FT should be easier to detect when occurring in conjunction with these other factors. We also show the utility of analysing different kinds of loci (X-linked, Y-linked, mitochondrial and autosomal) to assess whether FT is matrilineal, patrilineal or biparental. Finally, we demonstrate that the shape of the coalescent tree depends upon population size, in contrast to the classical Kingman's model.

Is Welfare Dependency Inherited? Estimating the Causal Welfare Transmission Effects Using Swedish Sibling Data

This study tests whether individuals who grow up with parents on welfare benefits are themselves more (or less) likely to be welfare recipients as young adults, compared to individuals who grow up in non-welfare households. We use the sibling difference method to identify causal effects separately from the effects of correlated factors. While a descriptive analysis reveals a fairly high positive intergenerational correlation, especially in the late teens and conditional on a large set of household level factors, the sibling analysis provides no support for a causal effect of parents’ welfare benefit receipt on children’s future welfare use.

Multilocus estimation of selfing and its heritability

We describe a new method of estimating the selfing rate (S) in a mixed mating population based on a population structure approach that accounts for possible intergenerational correlation in selfing rate, giving rise to an estimate of the upper limit for heritability of selfing rate (h2). A correlation between generations in selfing rate is shown to affect one- and two-locus probabilities of identity by descent. Conventional estimates of selfing rate based on a population structure approach are positively biased by intergenerational correlation in selfing. Multilocus genotypes of individuals are used to give maximum-likelihood estimates of S and h2 in the presence of scoring artifacts. Our multilocus estimation of selfing rate and its heritability (MESH) method was tested with simulated data for a range of conditions. Selfing rate estimates from MESH have low bias and root mean squared error, whereas estimates of the heritability of selfing rate have more uncertainty. Increasing the number of individuals in a sample helps to reduce bias and root mean squared error more than increasing the number of loci of sampled individuals. Improved estimates of selfing rate, as well as estimates of its heritability, can be obtained with this method, although a large number of loci and individuals are needed to achieve best results.

Gender, Geography and Generations: Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Post-Reform India

India experienced sustained economic growth for more than two decades following the economic liberalization in 1991. While economic growth reduced poverty significantly, it was also associated with an increase in inequality. Does this increase in inequality reflect deep-seated inequality of opportunity or efficient incentive structure in a market oriented economy? This paper provides evidence on economic mobility in post-reform India by focusing on educational attainment of children. We use two related measures of immobility: sibling and intergenerational correlations. We analyze the trends in and patterns of educational mobility from 1992/93 to 2006, with a special emphasis on the roles played by gender and geography. The evidence shows that family background plays a strong role; the estimated sibling correlation in India in 2006 is higher than the available estimates for Latin American countries. There is a persistent gender gap in rural and less-developed areas. The only group that experienced substantial improvements is women in urban and developed areas. Men experienced little or no upward mobility. Almost 70 percent of the variance in children’s education can be accounted for by parental education and geographic location. We provide possible explanations for the apparently puzzling improvements for urban women in a country with strong son preference.

Intergenerational Transmission of Education - Uncovering the Mechanisms Behind High Intergenerational Correlations

This paper aims at quantifying the relative importance of different transmission channels generating the high levels of intergenerational correlations in education, especially in Latin America. A simultaneous equations model is applied to rich survey data from Mexico. The results show that the economic situation of the family has the highest impact, even more than heritability of cognitive abilities. The long run economic situation seems to matter more than the current consumption level. Parental education affects the schooling outcome directly but also indirectly through the economic situation, which is particularly true for the father.

Intergenerational Correlations of Health Among Older Adults: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia

It is widely believed that family background has a significant influence on children’s life. The vast majority of the existent literature has focused on the relationship between parents’ education and income and the education and income of their children. Surprisingly, however, much less work has been done on the intergenerational transmission, or correlations of health. The main objective of this paper is to examine the correlations of health across generations using the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). The authors take advantage of the richness of IFLS and examine several health measures of respondents, including self-reports and biomarkers. As measures of health of both parents, IFLS has information on whether they are dead at the time of the last wave in 2007, their general health status and whether they have difficulties with any ADLs at the time of the survey or just before death. The findings suggest strong intergenerational correlations between the measures of parental health, schooling, and the health of their adult children. They also examine how these intergenerational correlations might change for respondents born in the more developed parts of Indonesia compared to the less developed areas. Interestingly, these health associations are much lower for respondents who were born in Java or Bali. These are areas of Indonesia that have experienced the most rapid economic growth over the past 40 years. This suggests that being born and growing up in developed areas, which may have better health infrastructure, substitutes for the influence of parental health.