Intergenerational mobility and equal opportunity, evidence from Finland

Abstract

Register based Finnish data are used to study intergenerational mobility. The conditional expectation of child income rank given parent income is linear in percentile ranks over most of the income range. On average, a 10 percentile increase in parent income rank is associated with a 2.2 percentile increase in a child’s income rank, somewhat higher than in the Scandinavian countries. At the top of parent income distribution, we observe relatively more immobility and enhanced educational outcomes. Second, there is some variation in intergenerational mobility across NUTS level 3 regions within Finland. Third, we explore the factors correlated with upward mobility. The results suggest that regions with high relative (absolute) intergenerational mobility have less income inequality in gross or disposable (factor) income.

• ISSN: 1795-1801 (Online)
• ISBN: 978-952-209-161-1 (Online)
• JEL: H0, I2, J6, R2
• Publication in PDF-format