Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers
Creation-Date: 2022-12-22
Number: 22-098/V
Author-Name: Martin Nybom
Author-Workplace-Name: IFAU
Author-Name: Erik Plug
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Amsterdam
Author-Name: Bas van der Klaauw
Author-Workplace-Name: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Author-Name: Lennart Ziegler
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Vienna
Title: Skills, Parental Sorting, and Child Inequality
Abstract: This paper formulates a simple skill and education model to explain how better
access to higher education leads to stronger assortative mating on skills of parents
and more polarized skill and earnings distributions of children. Swedish data show
that in the second half of the 20th century more skilled students increasingly
enrolled in college and ended up with more skilled partners and more skilled
children. Exploiting college expansions, we find that better college access increases
both skill sorting in couples and skill and earnings inequality among their children.
All findings support the notion that rising earnings inequality is, at least in part,
supply driven by rising skill inequality.
Classification-JEL: J62, I24, J12, J11

Keywords: Assortative mating, intergenerational mobility, education, earnings inequality

File-URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/22098.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 2.324.810 bytes
Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20220098