THREE ESSAYS ON INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY

Abstract

This dissertation develops and applies innovative causal inference methods to investigate the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of intergenerational mobility within the United States. Chapter 1 redefines the concept of mobility effects, a traditional focus of social stratification research, by shifting attention from the individual to the societal level. It establishes a methodological framework for assessing the impact of macro-level social mobility, specifically examining how changes in social mobility influence societal outcome distributions. This approach is demonstrated through two analyses exploring the effects of social mobility on average fertility rates and income inequality in the United States. Chapter 2 explores the influence of labor market transformations on the mechanisms underlying intergenerational income transmission. Utilizing data from diverse sources and employing a novel causal decomposition technique, this chapter reveals a shift in intergenerational income transmission away from cognitive factors towards non-cognitive ones in recent decades in the United States. Chapter 3 evaluates the impact of parental college education on intergenerational mobility. While previous discussions have primarily centered on the college attainment of children, this study redirects attention to the educational backgrounds of parents. The research demonstrates that children of college-educated parents experience significantly greater mobility compared to those with non-college-educated parents. I assess the robustness of this pattern to confounding factors by evaluating a novel causal estimand. Collectively, this dissertation addresses longstanding puzzles in social mobility studies through the application of cutting-edge causal inference methodologies. These methodological advancements offer new insights on traditional research questions and theoretical perspectives.