From the Cradle to the Grave: The Influence of Family Background on the Career Path of Italian Men
Résumé
This paper investigates the influence of parental education on the returns to experience of
Italian men using a new longitudinal dataset that contains detailed information on individual
working histories. Our favourite panel estimates indicate that an additional year of parental
education increases sons' weekly wages by 11.7% after twenty years of experience and that 71%
of this effect emerges during the career. We show that this effect holds irrespective of individual
abilities, and it appears the result of both a glass ceiling effect, due to the complementarity
between parental education and son’s abilities, and a parachute effect, associated with family
labour market connections.
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