Intergenerational mobility: Shifting the focus

The starting point of this project is that research on intergenerational socioeconomic persistence needs to resolutely shift the perspective away from ‘normative’ careers of ‘typical’ men to the actual Swedish population.

To the backdrop of important societal changes in the 20th century, such as educational expansion, increased gender equality, increasing immigration, and increasing economic inequality, we propose three themes of research: (1) How educational expansion and gender equalization have affected the role of level and field of education for intergenerational persistence; (2) How peer effects may contribute to gender- and class-conformist careers; and, (3) Whether the higher aspirations can be a springboard to upward mobility among those of migrant background, and to which extent this process is gendered.

The project combines a macro-oriented approach looking at larger scale trends, with a micro-oriented approach looking at the role of norms, self-perceptions and influence in peer groups.

We use full-population register data and the Swedish part of CILS4EU (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries), and work with decomposition techniques, network analysis, and methods (such as fixed effects and IV-models) for causal identification.

By re-centering the field and asking questions from new perspectives, we hope to draw the contours of a new conceptual framework.