Explore the vast range of titles available.

BACKGROUND Family background strongly shapes when and how people have their first child, with potential consequences for inequality. In the United Kingdom, non-marital births have risen, yet little is known about how parental class drives these patterns. OBJECTIVE This study investigates how parental occupational class influences first-time parenthood within marriage or cohabitation, or outside any union. It further examines changes in these relationships across birth cohorts from 1940 to 1990. METHODS Using longitudinal data from about 55,000 individuals in the British Household Panel Study and Understanding Society, we apply discrete-time event history models. We compare transitions to parenthood by partnership context, controlling for individual and parental socioeconomic characteristics. RESULTS Higher class origins delay parenthood and reduce the likelihood of single parenthood. Over time, the probability of first birth within marriage has become increasingly similar across social classes, while cohabiting and single parenthood have become more strongly stratified. CONCLUSIONS Socioeconomic background remains central to shaping partnership contexts around first births, with growing divergence in cohabitation and single parenthood. These findings signal persistent class-based inequalities, underscoring the need for policy to pay attention to family formation pathways. CONTRIBUTION This research demonstrates that parental occupational class influences not only the timing but also the context of first childbearing. By linking cohort trends to social background differences, it offers new evidence on how intergenerational inequality persists or evolves through shifting pathways to parenthood in contemporary Britain.

Parents are increasingly supporting their children well into adulthood and often serve as a safety net during periods of economic and marital instability. Improving life expectancies and health allows parents to provide for their children longer, but greater union dissolution among parents can weaken the safety net they can create for their adult children. Greater mortality, nonmarital childbearing, and divorce among families with lower socioeconomic status may be reinforcing inequalities across generations. This article examines two cohorts aged 25-49 from the 1988 (n = 7,246) and 2013 (n = 7,014) Panel Study of Income Dynamics Roster and Transfers Files. In 1988, adults with a college degree had two surviving parents living together for 1.8 years longer than nongraduates. This disparity increased to 6.8 years in 2013. This five-year increase in disparity was driven predominantly by higher rates of union dissolution among parents of adults with less education. Growing differences in paternal mortality also contributed to the rise in inequality.

PurposeThe authors analyse how the association between parental background and adult children's earnings changes when net rather than gross children's earnings are considered and disentangle what such changes depend on: differences between pre and after taxes earnings inequality or reranking of individuals along the earnings distribution before and after taxes.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2011, the authors focus on two large European countries, Italy and Poland, with comparable levels of inequality and background-related earnings premia but very different personal income tax (PIT) design and estimate – at both the mean and the deciles of the earnings distribution – the association between parents' characteristics and children's gross and net earnings.FindingsThe authors find that in Italy the PIT reduces the magnitude of the association between parental background and adult children's earnings at the top of the distribution, while no effects emerge for Poland, and the reduction is mostly due to a decrease in earnings inequality rather than to a re-ranking of children along the distribution. The findings are confirmed when the authors simulate the introduction of a “quasi flat tax” regime in Italy.Social implicationsThe findings suggest that the higher the tax progressivity, the higher the background-related inequality reduction and the lower the intergenerational association, signalling that the degree of progressivity amongst children may be an effective weapon to reduce intergenerational inequality.Originality/valueIn the literature on intergenerational inequality, the role of taxes is usually overlooked. In this paper, the authors try to fill this gap and enquire how the PIT design affects the association between parental background and adult children's earnings.

Social scientists have long been interested in marital homogamy and its relationship with inequality. However, measuring homogamy is not straightforward, particularly when one is interested in assessing marital sorting based on multiple traits. In this paper, we argue that Separate Extreme Value (SEV) models not only generate a matching function with several desirable theoretical properties, but they are also suited for the study of multidimensional sorting. Specifically, we use rich small-scale survey data to examine sorting among parents of school-age children in Naples. We show that homogamy is pervasive; not only do men and women sort by age, education, and physical characteristics, but they also look for partners that share similar health-related behavior and risk attitude. However, we also show that these marital patterns are well explained by a low number of dimensions, the most important being age cohort and human capital. In particular, human capital relates to various \"outcomes\" of the post-matching relationship. Children of parents with a high human capital endowment perform better at school, although they report lower levels of subjective well-being and of perceived quality of relationship with their mothers.

As wealth inequality increases, the importance of parental financial transfers for socioeconomic attainment may also rise. Using data from the 2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics Rosters and Transfers Module, this study investigates two questions: how parental financial transfers for education have changed over time, and what the relationship is between these transfers and adult socioeconomic outcomes. Results suggest that transfers for education have increased, have become more commonplace, and have become more dependent on parental wealth over time. Holding constant several individual and parental measures, the relationship between parental transfers for school and adult socioeconomic attainment is positive. This relationship holds when using three-stage least squares models to account for potential endogeneity of financial transfers for school. Overall, results support arguments that parental financial transfers for education facilitate the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic standing.

We examine intergenerational mobility differences between Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the US. Using ranks, we find that the US is substantially less intergenerationally mobile than the three European countries and that the most mobile region of the US is less mobile than the least mobile regions of Norway and Sweden. Using a linear estimator of income share mobility, we find that the four countries have very similar rates of intergenerational mobility. However, when we use non-parametric versions of rank and income share mobility, we find that the US tends to experience lower upward mobility at the bottom of the income distribution than Norway and Sweden.

Vocational high schools (BHS) constitute a popular school type in Austria and are particularly appealing to students from lower socio‐economic backgrounds. These five‐year schools provide an alternative pathway to a general higher education entrance qualification, combining academic schooling with the “safety net” of school‐based vocational training. Although BHS represent an important route into higher education, with approximately half of graduates entering higher education within three years, the other half do not, with many opting to enter the labour market directly. Drawing on rational action theory, this study examines the relationship between students’ social backgrounds (measured by parental education level), labour market prospects following graduation from BHS, and higher education enrolment. We analyse the further educational and labour market pathways of the entire 2016/17 cohort of Austrian BHS graduates, using unique data that combines several high‐quality administrative registers. Descriptive analysis shows that transition rates to higher education vary considerably according to parental education. We employ logistic regression models to demonstrate that higher regional unemployment rates for the particular vocational qualification of BHS are associated with increased transition rates to higher education. In contrast with the assumptions of the “diversion thesis,” findings indicate that this effect does not vary according to the education of students’ parents. Consequently, BHS graduates with lower levels of parental education are equally likely to be deterred from pursuing higher education by the prospect of employment as those with higher parental education.

Home ownership has been in decline in a number of developed societies since the early-2000s driven, primarily, by declining entry among younger households who have been increasingly pushed into the rental sector. This trend has been associated with a growing intergenerational divide, or even conflict, and the emergence of ‘Generation Rent’. This paper explores the conditions surrounding diminishing access to owner-occupation among new households with a focus on the historic maturation of home ownership sectors, the restructuring of the political economy around financialized housing wealth and the inter-cohort dynamics surrounding the accumulation and transfer of housing wealth. The paper takes an international perspective drawing on evidence from two parallel, but contrasting cases: Japan and the UK. The analysis illustrates the interrelatedness of inter- and intra-generational inequalities, with the former reinforcing the latter. It also focuses on the role of families as both a moderator of generational inequity at the micro level as well as an enhancer of socioeconomic inequalities overall.

We derive a simple rule for a nearly optimal carbon tax that can be implemented and tested in a decentralized market economy. Our simple rule depends on the effect of the pure rate of time preference, growth, and intergenerational inequality aversion and basic parameters of the carbon cycle, but also on any adverse effects of global warming on economic growth and mean reversion in climate damages. The performance of the simple rule is excellent and yields only negligible welfare losses compared with the true welfare optimum under a wide range of perturbations including some extreme runs designed to severely road test the rule. Our IAM allows for scarce fossil fuel and endogenous energy transitions and generates cumulative carbon emissions and stranded assets which are also well predicted by our rule.

How do average levels of income and wealth differ in Britain for those born between the 1930s and 1980s? Those in the 1980s cohort are the first post-war generation not to have higher median incomes in their early 30s than those born a decade earlier, though they have much higher incomes than those born in the 1960s and earlier. Median wealth for those in the 1980s cohort is 20 per cent lower in their early 30s than it was for those born in the 1970s. This is driven by lower property wealth and homeownership: 40 per cent at age 30 for the 1980s cohort, compared with 55 per cent for the 1970s cohort.