Intergenerational Mobility: Guest Editors' Preface

Date01 January 2017
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12224
Published date01 January 2017
Scand. J. of Economics 119(1), 3–4, 2017
DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12224
Intergenerational Mobility:
Guest Editors’ Preface
Researchers as well as policymakers are increasingly interested in questions
of intergenerational mobility in advanced industrial societies. The six papers
in this special issue contribute to this major research program.
The first three papers in this issue focus on the facts of intergenerational
mobility. The paper by Pekkarinen, Salvanes, and Sarvim¨
aki and the pa-
per by Modalsli provide systematic analyses of mobility in Norway. Both
papers document substantial increases in mobility in the latter two-thirds
of the twentieth century compared to the past. Reasons for this are sug-
gested, including improvements in education and the shift of the Norwegian
economy away from farming. As such, the findings are suggestive of the
interplay of policy and technology in mobility dynamics. Bratberg et al.
expand the analysis to compare Norway with Germany, Sweden, and the
US. Their analysis demonstrates that the US exhibits a lower rate of upward
mobility for those at the bottom of the income distribution as opposed to
their European counterparts.
The second three papers turn towards the mechanisms that determine
rates of mobility. Caucutt, Lochner, and Park present a theoretical model
of mobility in which genes, parental preferences, responses to uncertainty,
and credit constraints constitute distinct channels by which parental status
is transmitted to children via parental investment. This paper shows how
these mechanisms can be observationally distinguished. Rustichini, Iacono,
and McGue employ data on twins to study the roles of intergenerational
transmission of cognitive and non-cognitive skills, showing that the trans-
mission of personality has important effects on both upward and downward
mobility. Finally, Landersø and Heckman develop a comparison of Denmark
and the US to understand why Denmark exhibits more income mobility.
The analysis finds that the sources for this are tax and transfer policies
combined with a relatively more compressed wage distribution. In contrast,
Denmark does not exhibit greater educational mobility, which is surprising
in light of the zero tuition policy for universities.
The papers in this special issue were originally delivered at a conference
held at the University of Chicago under the auspices of the Human Capital
and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (HCEO). We thank
HCEO for its support of this research endeavor. We are also grateful to
CThe editors of The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 2016.

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