Life-Cycle Economic Returns to Educational Mobility in Denmark
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Life-Cycle Economic Returns to Educational Mobility in Denmark. / Birkelund, Jesper Fels; Karlson, Kristian Bernt; Yaish, Meir.
In: Sociology, Vol. 56, No. 6, 2022, p. 1121-1139.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Life-Cycle Economic Returns to Educational Mobility in Denmark
AU - Birkelund, Jesper Fels
AU - Karlson, Kristian Bernt
AU - Yaish, Meir
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Although most studies of the transition from school to work take a snapshot perspective in examining economic returns to education, such returns evolve over an individual’s lifetime. We empirically test a theoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage mechanism about enduring life-cycle effects of educational mobility on income. We analyse income trajectories for all Danes born in 1960–1961, and we consider how the welfare state may counteract certain mechanisms of intergenerational transmission that give children with college-educated parents better opportunities in the labour market. We find only small direct effects of parental college attainment on earnings trajectories after we control for offspring college attainment. Thus, schooling acts a powerful and enduring economic leveller of family background effects in Denmark. Our analyses also show direct effects on trajectories in property income derived from wealth, suggesting that the welfare state has a harder time equalising income from wealth than from earnings.
AB - Although most studies of the transition from school to work take a snapshot perspective in examining economic returns to education, such returns evolve over an individual’s lifetime. We empirically test a theoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage mechanism about enduring life-cycle effects of educational mobility on income. We analyse income trajectories for all Danes born in 1960–1961, and we consider how the welfare state may counteract certain mechanisms of intergenerational transmission that give children with college-educated parents better opportunities in the labour market. We find only small direct effects of parental college attainment on earnings trajectories after we control for offspring college attainment. Thus, schooling acts a powerful and enduring economic leveller of family background effects in Denmark. Our analyses also show direct effects on trajectories in property income derived from wealth, suggesting that the welfare state has a harder time equalising income from wealth than from earnings.
U2 - 10.1177/00380385221090877
DO - 10.1177/00380385221090877
M3 - Journal article
VL - 56
SP - 1121
EP - 1139
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
SN - 0038-0385
IS - 6
ER -
ID: 291358789