Thomas A. Dunn

Intergenerational Correlations in Labor Market Status: A Comparison of the United States and Germany

We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-economic Panel to calculate comparable measures of intergenerational correlations of earnings, hours, and education in the United States and in Germany. Our results indicate that there is remarkable similarity across the two countries in the correlations of earnings and of annual work hours of fathers and sons. The corresponding correlations for daughters and mothers are stronger in the United States than Germany, most likely due to the greater labor market integration of women in the United States. We also find that intergenerational correlations in educational attainment are considerably stronger in the United States.

The Effects of Family Characteristics on the Return to Education

In this paper, the authors examine the role of parental education in the human capital production function by estimating the effects of parental education on the education profile of wages. The analysis uses sibling pairs from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience of Young Men and Young Women. The authors obtained mixed evidence on whether parental education raises the return to education. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.