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Seminar

Dynastic Human Capital, Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility


  • Series
  • Speaker
    Mårten Palme (Stockholm University)
  • Field
    Empirical Microeconomics
  • Location
    Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam
    Amsterdam
  • Date and time

    October 29, 2019
    16:00 - 17:15

We study the importance of the extended family – the dynasty – for the persistence in inequality across generations. We use data including the entire Swedish population, linking four generations. This data structure enables us to identify parents’ siblings and cousins, their spouses, and the spouses’ siblings. Using various human capital measures, we show that traditional parent-child estimates of intergenerational persistence miss almost one-third of the persistence found at the dynasty level. To assess the importance of genetic links, we use a sample of adoptees. We then find that the importance of the extended family relative to the parents increases.

Joint work with Adrian Adermon and Mikael Lindahl.