From the Cradle to the Grave: the impact of family background on carrier path of Italian males

Michele Raitano (1) , Francesco Vona (2)

1 UNIROMA - Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" = Sapienza University [Rome]
2 OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po)

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.

Keywords: Intergenerational Inequality; Parental Education; Experience-Earnings profiles

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology

Michele Raitano, Francesco Vona. From the Cradle to the Grave: the impact of family background on carrier path of Italian males. 2015. ⟨hal-03460113⟩