The Mystery of Success: How Family Background Shapes Social Mobility
36 Pages Posted: 28 Sep 2024
Abstract
This study investigates social mobility and its drivers based on a comprehensive measure using a new administrative dataset from Switzerland, comprising over 1,100,000 observations from 23 cohorts. We examine the overall impact of familial factors instead of traditional parent-child associations to provide a wide-ranging indicator of social mobility. Using two-level linear mixed models, we find that family background accounts for 15% of the variation in income. Our approach further sheds light on the underlying factors contributing to the measured family influence, with parental income, parental marital status, nationality and community type showing limited impact. Notably, about 90% of the family effect remain unexplained, indicating a high degree of equality of opportunity.
Keywords: social mobilitysibling correlationdriversdecomposition
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