Adrian Adermon: "Dynastic human capital, ethnic human capital, and intergenerational mobility"

Adrian Adermon, PhD, IFAU, Uppsala Center for Labor Studies, Uppsala University: "Dynastic human capital, ethnic human capital, and intergenerational mobility"

Abstract
We estimate long-run intergenerational persistence in human capital using information on outcomes for the extended family: the dynasty. A dataset including the entire Swedish population, linking four generations, allows us to identify parents’ siblings and cousins, their spouses, and spouses’ siblings. In a first paper, we use various human capital measures to show that traditional parent-child estimates underestimate long-run intergenerational persistence by at least one-third. By adding outcomes for more distant ancestors, we show that almost all of the persistence is captured by the parental generation. Data on adoptees show that at least one-third of long-term persistence is attributed to environmental factors. In a second project, we study intergenerational mobility among immigrants, extending the model to account for "ethnic" human capital.