Trends in Intergenerational Income Mobility in Sweden

Anders Björklund, Stockholm University
Markus Jantti, Stockholm University
Lena Lindahl, Stockholm University

The level of intergenerational income mobility is reasonably well understood across countries, but for many countries, including Sweden, little is known about its change over time. We exploit newly available data to extend existing estimates for Sweden using parental incomes starting in 1960 and offspring income up until 2007. This allows us to examine how the persistence of long-run income has changed for offspring cohorts born in 1945 to 1962 using a reasonably wide window to measure long-run incomes for both parents and offspring. By exploiting these longer time series, we are also able to study how sensitive estimated trends are to parts of the life-cycle relative to longer-run income measures. The paper thus aims to provide the first set of estimates for trends in intergenerational income persistence in Sweden, and explore their robustness to measurement problems that stem from variations in the income process across the life cycle.