Like father like son? Intergenerational immobility in England, 1851-1911

Zhu, Ziming ORCID: 0000-0002-2550-311X (2022) Like father like son? Intergenerational immobility in England, 1851-1911. Economic History working paper series (349). Department of Economic History, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

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Abstract

This paper uses a linked sample of between 67,000 and 160,000 father-son pairs in 1851-1911 to provide revised estimates of intergenerational occupational mobility in England. After correcting for classical measurement errors using instrumental variables, I find that conventional estimates of intergenerational elasticities could severely underestimate the extent of father-son association in socioeconomic status. Instrumenting one measure of the father’s outcome with a second measure of the father’s outcome raises the intergenerational elasticities (β) of occupational status from 0.4 to 0.6-0.7. Victorian England was therefore a society of limited social mobility. The implications of my results for long-run evolution and international comparisons of social mobility in England are discussed.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Official URL:	https://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Working-Pap...
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author
Divisions:	Economic History
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies > J62 - Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility N - Economic History > N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Income, and Wealth > N33 - Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Income and Wealth: Europe: Pre-1913
Date Deposited:	13 Dec 2022 08:33
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 19:42
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/117588

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