Inequality Persists Over Generations
Your great-grandparents’ socio-economic status still predicts your status today, according to research by Sebastian Braun from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Jan Stuhler from the University Madrid. Their study of educational and occupational status over four generations in twentieth century Germany reveals that inequalities do not disappear quickly but can be transmitted across multiple generations. It is published in the March 2018 issue of the Economic Journal.
With socio-economic inequality as a major public concern, researchers have long been interested in measuring how persistent inequalities are between generations. Do the descendants from successful families tend to remain successful? Or is there ‘intergenerational mobility’, such that an individual’s origin is not a prime determinant of his or her socio-economic status?
A new study by Sebastian Braun from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Jan Stuhler from the University Madrid which is published in the March 2018 issue of the Economic Journal examines the persistence of socio-economic status over four generations in twentieth century Germany (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecoj.12453/full).The researchers conclude that on average, about 60 percent of socio-economic prospects were transmitted from one generation to the next, irrespective of whether socio-economic success is measured in terms of educational or occupational advantages.