Intergenerational transmission of occupation in the United States

Abstract

This paper explores the persistence of inequality via intergenerational transmission of occupations using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data from 1968 to 2001 of 56,952 unique parent-child pairs. I find that having a father who is in the top and bottom strata † of the socioeconomic professional category has a positive and significant effect on the probability that a son will follow the same professional category as the father, which supports my main hypothesis of persistence of income inequality concerning the transmission of the occupations. The main concern that has been addressed in this paper is that the intangible cost of the entry, like soft skills, and profession-specific skills required for the particular profession, would be more unevenly exposed to the children.

Keywords: Intergenerational mobility, Intergenerational occupation, Inequality, applied microeconomics, econometrics

JEL Classification: J62, E2, E27, D63