Essays on intergenerational mobility

Intergenerational mobility studies how the distribution of some relevant measure of individual status changes between different generations in a given society. This study looks at the phenomenon both from an empirical and a theoretical viewpoint and is composed by three essays. The first essay, titled "Intergenerational mobility of status: concepts and measurement", reviews the literature on the topic. The second essay, titled "Intergenerational mobility with multiple dimensions in Germany and United Kingdom", provides an empirical estimation on mobility using SOEP and BHPS-UKHLS data. A multivariate methodology to the mobility estimation, the factor analysis model, is applied. The main results show a significant reduction in the level of mobility when looking at multiple dimensions for both the generations with respect to the earnings mobility estimates. The third essay is the result of joint work with Fabrizio Patriarca from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and is titled "Referrals, intergenerational mobility and human capital accumulation". It is a theoretical contribution that, following the same perspective of the first two, introduces in an intergenerational mobility model with credit constraints another source of friction arising in the labour market and in particular from the existence of networks influencing the job search. The results are that, under certain conditions, the interaction between the frictions may hamper the human capital accumulation process and, as a consequence, reduces the level of mobility.