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March 7, 2012

SOEP Brown Bag Seminar

SOEP Brown Bag Seminar: How Important is the Family? Evidence from Sibling Correlations in the US, Germany and Denmark
How Important is the Family? Evidence from Sibling Correlations in the US, Germany and Denmark

Date

March 7, 2012
12:30 - 13:30

Location

Gustav-Schmoller-Raum
DIW Berlin im Quartier 110
Room 3.3.002A
Mohrenstraße 58
10117 Berlin

Speakers

Daniel D. Schnitzlein

This paper is the first to analyze intergenerational economic mobility based on sibling correlations in permanent economic outcomes in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and the US. The main findings are as follows: the importance of family and community background in Germany is higher than in Denmark and comparable to that in the US. This holds true for brothers and sisters. In Denmark 20 percent of the inequality in permanent earnings can be attributed to family and community factors shared by brothers while the corresponding estimates are 43 percent in Germany and 45 percent in the US. For sisters the estimates are 19 percent for Denmark, 39 percent for Germany and 29 percent for the US. This ranking is shown to be robust against alternative approaches.

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