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Intergenerational Mobility in Britain: Evidence from Unemployment Patterns
Author(s) -
O'Neill Donal,
Sweetman Olive
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
oxford bulletin of economics and statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.131
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0084
pISSN - 0305-9049
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0084.00108
Subject(s) - unemployment , welfare , welfare dependency , demographic economics , welfare state , economics , empirical evidence , social mobility , labour economics , sociology , economic growth , political science , social science , philosophy , epistemology , politics , law , market economy
Recent papers have examined the intergenerational transmission of well‐being by looking at the relationship between parents' and children's income. However, by concentrating on those who are working these studies exclude some of the very poorest in society, the unemployed. In this paper we extend the empirical work on intergenerational welfare in the UK by looking at the links between fathers' and sons' unemployment histories. Using an approach which takes account of both incidence and intensity of son's unemployment, we provide further evidence showing that parental background is an important determinant of a child's future welfare. A son whose father was unemployed 20 years earlier is almost twice as likely to be unemployed as a son whose father was not unemployed. Furthermore, this dependency remains significant after controlling for a range of son's characteristics including education, ability and family composition.