Multidimensional Intergenerational Inequality: Resource and Gender Specificity : Intergenerational transmission of inequality in education, social class, and income attainment using a sibling correlations approach

Abstract: This study focuses on intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic resources in multiple dimensions and decomposes the influence of parents’ education, social class, and income in relation to the same outcomes for children as well as the unique impact of mothers and fathers on sons and daughters. In order to minimize measurement error in parental characteristics and life course bias for children, high quality Swedish administrative register data (spanning over 40 years) is utilized. A sibling correlation approach is employed to establish the net influence of each parental resource, both in general and by parents’ and children’s gender. The results show that intergenerational inequality is subject to resource specificity. First, same resource transmission implies that the same parental resource as the child outcome matter most in transmission of advantage. In this sense, educational elites foster educational elites, while economic advantage favor children’s own economic status. Second, the intermediate and overlapping socioeconomic field resource, parental social class, explains most of children´s outcomes in education and income suggesting that there is a same field transmission. Parental resources explain little variation in its field opposite (i.e. parental education on child income and parental income on child education). Finally, whether or not intergenerational inequality is subject to gender specificity is ambiguous, it ranges from negligible to substantial contributions. Mothers’ and fathers’ resources do matter independently over all outcomes, where especially fathers’ income dominate and drives the total influence of parental income. However, the result for the same gender transmission is mixed. The conclusion is that gender and, especially, resource specificity cannot be neglected without biasing results, confusing time trends, and underestimating the true rate of intergenerational inequality. Intergenerational processes of inequality will be misrepresented in a unidimensional conceptualization of socioeconomic transmission, which will also affect both theoretical understanding and the prospects of policy intervention.