Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17821
Authors: Martin Nybom; Erik Plug; Bas van der Klaauw; Lennart Ziegler
Abstract: This paper formulates a simple skill and education model to explain how better access to higher education leads to stronger assortative mating on skills of parents and more polarized skill and earnings distributions of children. Swedish data show that in the second half of the 20th century more skilled students increasingly enrolled in college and ended up with more skilled partners and more skilled children. Exploiting college expansions, we find that better college access increases both skill sorting in couples and skill and earnings inequality among their children. All findings support the notion that rising earnings inequality is, at least in part, supply driven by rising skill inequality.
Keywords: assortative mating; intergenerational mobility; education; earnings inequality
JEL Codes: J62; I24; J12; J11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Improved access to higher education (I24) | Increased assortative mating on skills among parents (J12) |
| Increased assortative mating on skills among parents (J12) | Higher likelihood of skilled partners marrying each other (J24) |
| Increased assortative mating on skills among parents (J12) | More polarized skill and earnings distribution among children (I24) |
| More polarized skill and earnings distribution among parents (J31) | Higher skill parents likely producing higher-skilled offspring (J24) |
| Higher skill parents (J24) | Better cognitive skills and higher earnings for children (I21) |
| Father's skill rank increase (J24) | Son's skill rank increase (J24) |