Nepotism vs. Specific Skills: The effect of professional liberalization on returns to parental background of Italian lawyers

Careers and Intergenerational Income Mobility

“…The previous analysis quantifies the contribution of occupational following to di↵erences in the occupations children pursue, but ignores the possibility that parental occupations may a↵ect the economic returns children obtain from working in di↵erent occupations. For example, children of lawyers may not only be more likely to become lawyers, but may also benefit from their parents' network relative to other lawyers who do not have lawyer parents (Raitano and Vona, 2021), thereby increasing their economic returns to practicing law. Alternatively, nepotism and barriers to entry may allow less-talented children with lawyer parents to enter the profession, and children who overcome these barriers despite not having lawyer parents plausibly have relatively higher earnings potential.…”

“…Children of high-income parents may end up in high-paying occupations because their parents worked in those same or similar occupations. For instance, prior work has documented the intergenerational transmission of specific occupations such as physicians (Lentz and Laband, 1989), lawyers (Laband and Lentz, 1992;Raitano and Vona, 2021), pharmacists (Mocetti, 2016), as well as liberal professions (Aina and Nicoletti, 2018) and professional services (Mocetti et al, 2020) more generally. We extend the analysis to encompass all 500 occupations listed in the Canadian census.…”

Privilege travels: migration and labour market outcomes of Southern Italian graduates

“…4 Marginal change in predicted income as a function of parental education. Bars denote 95% confidence intervals; both HE = both parents with a higher education degree (reference); one HE = one parent with a higher education degree; one HS = one parent with a high school degree; < HS = both parents with less than a high school degree 13 Law graduates have the lowest probability of migration and one potential explanation is that lawyers is one of the occupational categories with the highest intergenerational transmission of inequality at least in Italy (Raitano & Vona, 2021). Therefore, considering the importance of family background not only for admission to the university but also later on the labour market, law graduates might perceive migration as a less attractive option, compared to graduates from other fields of study.…”