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 is associated with a 1.9 percentile increase in a child’s income, similar with the Scandinavian countries. At the top of parent income distribution, we observe relatively more immobility. Second, there is some variation in intergenerational mobility across NUTS level 3 regions within Finland. Third, we explore the factors correlated with upward mobility. 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