IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp18691.html

Social Connections and the Persistence of Income Across Generations

Author

Listed:
  • Laliberté, Jean-William

    (University of Calgary)

  • Whalley, Alexander

    (University of Calgary)

Abstract

We use matched parent-child-employer-employee data from Canada, linked to detailed educational records, to quantify the contribution of social connections to employers to intergenerational income mobility. Sorting across employers accounts for roughly a third of the transmission of income across generations. To estimate the impact of social connections on differential representation across employers, we compare classmates -- those with the same degree from the same institution -- who have different social connections. We find social connections in the labor market explain about 15% of the firm-sorting component of the intergenerational income rank-rank relationship, about a third the explanatory power of education.

Suggested Citation

  • Laliberté, Jean-William & Whalley, Alexander, 2026. "Social Connections and the Persistence of Income Across Generations," IZA Discussion Papers 18691, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18691
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp18691.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    --->

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18691. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.