I use retrospective data on smokers from the German Socio-Economic Panel to investigate whether children are more likely to smoke if their parents smoke(d). Despite intense policy interest, researchers have not established whether the well-established (positive) association is causal. I exploit panel data observations on smoking behavior of parents and children to develop instrumental variables that ...
We investigate whether Germans immigrants to the US work in higher-status occupations than they would have had they remained in Germany. We account for potential bias from selective migration. The probability of migration is identified using life-cycle and cohort variation in economic conditions in the US. We also explore whether occupational choices vary for Germans who migrated as children or as ...
This paper examines how parental unemployment affects the transition to postsecondary education in different institutional contexts. Drawing on theoretical perspectives in intergenerational mobility research and sociology of higher education, we estimate the extent to which these intergenerational effects depend on social and education policies. We use data from five longitudinal surveys to analyze ...