Explaining Gender-Specific Trends in Income Mobility: The Role of Education

Abstract

Rising income inequality has aroused widespread concern about potential decreases in intergenerational income mobility. Intriguingly, recent research reveals that income mobility remains stable among men while declining among women, but the reasons for these disparities are unclear. This study explores the role of education by asking whether gender-specific mobility trends can be explained by gender differences in changes in educational inequality and returns to education. Using Swedish register data for cohorts born between 1958 and 1979, the results confirm gender-specific trends: the intergenerational rank association between parental disposable income and child labor income has decreased and then stabilized for men while increasing steadily for women. Decomposition analyses of trends in income mobility indicate that, for men, decreased educational inequality was the primary factor driving increased income mobility, while returns to education were stable and had limited effects. For women, decreased educational inequality also increased mobility, but this was counteracted by rising direct income associations net of education across cohorts and growing educational returns among younger cohorts. In summary, through rising educational returns, education has increasingly driven women’s income persistence but not men’s. These findings suggest that examining gender-specific mobility trends in the context of increasing gender equality in society and the economy sheds new light on the role of education in mobility mechanisms.