Aspects of Intergenerational Mobility

The first paper uses Austrian HFCS data to examine how parents' cultural capital – measured by the father's education, the number of books in the household and cultural activities during childhood – affects net wealth in the long term. The results show that cultural capital is related to wealth accumulation both indirectly, through education and income, and directly, especially in older cohorts.

The second paper compares intergenerational income mobility in Europe. It uses a new Bayesian method to estimate fathers' income based on EU-SILC data. This approach allows for more explicit consideration of the associated uncertainties when imputing fathers' income. Some preliminary results show clear differences in income mobility between individual countries: while northern European countries such as Finland exhibit high mobility, it is significantly more limited in southern and eastern European countries such as Italy and Hungary. Austria is in the lower midfield, but income persistence is significantly more pronounced than with the frequentist estimation method.

Please be aware that this seminar will be recorded and published digitally.