It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden
A recent literature studies the role of grandparents in status transmission. Results have been mixed, and theoretical contributions highlight biases that complicate the interpretation of these studies. We use newly harmonized income tax records on more than 700,000 Swedish lineages to establish four...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Society for Sociological Science
2020
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| _version_ | 1826261695296700416 |
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| author | Engzell, P Mood, C Jonsson, J |
| author_facet | Engzell, P Mood, C Jonsson, J |
| author_sort | Engzell, P |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | A recent literature studies the role of grandparents in status transmission. Results have been mixed, and theoretical contributions highlight biases that complicate the interpretation of these studies. We use newly harmonized income tax records on more than 700,000 Swedish lineages to establish four empirical facts. First, a model that includes both mothers and fathers and takes a multidimensional view of stratification reduces the residual three-generation association in our population to a trivial size. Second, data on fathers’ cognitive ability show that even extensive controls for standard socioeconomic variables fail to remove omitted variable bias. Third, the common finding that grandparents compensate poor parental resources can be attributed to greater difficulty of observing parent status accurately at the lower end of the distribution. Fourth, the lower the data quality, and the less detailed the model, the greater is the size of the estimated grandparent coefficient. Future work on multigenerational mobility should pay less attention to the size and significance of this association, which depends heavily on arbitrary sample and specification characteristics, and go on to establish a set of more robust descriptive facts.
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| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T19:25:23Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:1b85b44c-b023-4cba-9421-9b5133e8912e |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T19:25:23Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Society for Sociological Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:1b85b44c-b023-4cba-9421-9b5133e8912e2022-03-26T11:00:51ZIt’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in SwedenJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:1b85b44c-b023-4cba-9421-9b5133e8912eEnglishSymplectic ElementsSociety for Sociological Science2020Engzell, PMood, CJonsson, JA recent literature studies the role of grandparents in status transmission. Results have been mixed, and theoretical contributions highlight biases that complicate the interpretation of these studies. We use newly harmonized income tax records on more than 700,000 Swedish lineages to establish four empirical facts. First, a model that includes both mothers and fathers and takes a multidimensional view of stratification reduces the residual three-generation association in our population to a trivial size. Second, data on fathers’ cognitive ability show that even extensive controls for standard socioeconomic variables fail to remove omitted variable bias. Third, the common finding that grandparents compensate poor parental resources can be attributed to greater difficulty of observing parent status accurately at the lower end of the distribution. Fourth, the lower the data quality, and the less detailed the model, the greater is the size of the estimated grandparent coefficient. Future work on multigenerational mobility should pay less attention to the size and significance of this association, which depends heavily on arbitrary sample and specification characteristics, and go on to establish a set of more robust descriptive facts. |
| spellingShingle | Engzell, P Mood, C Jonsson, J It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden |
| title | It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden |
| title_full | It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden |
| title_fullStr | It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden |
| title_full_unstemmed | It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden |
| title_short | It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden |
| title_sort | it s all about the parents inequality transmission across three generations in sweden |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT engzellp itsallabouttheparentsinequalitytransmissionacrossthreegenerationsinsweden AT moodc itsallabouttheparentsinequalitytransmissionacrossthreegenerationsinsweden AT jonssonj itsallabouttheparentsinequalitytransmissionacrossthreegenerationsinsweden |