IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/ifauwp/2026_021.html

Labor-market drivers of intergenerational earnings persistence

Author

Listed:
  • Forsberg, Erika

    (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy)

  • Nybom, Martin

    (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy)

  • Stuhler, Jan

    (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Abstract

How does worker-firm sorting contribute to intergenerational persistence? Firm pay premia account for 36% of the intergenerational earnings elasticity in Sweden, rising to 50% with dynamic returns to firm-specific experience. Large pay gaps already open atlabor market entry, as children from privileged backgrounds find more favorable entry points; they then climb the firm pay ladder faster, switching firms more often and gaining more per switch. Skill sorting explains this widening but not the initial gaps, consistent with networks and employer learning. Privileged children’s firms are also more desirable overall, a gap that keeps widening after pay gaps stabilize.

Suggested Citation

  • Forsberg, Erika & Nybom, Martin & Stuhler, Jan, 2026. "Labor-market drivers of intergenerational earnings persistence," Working Paper Series 2026:21, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifau.se/globalassets/pdf/se/2026/wp-2026-21-labor-market-drivers-of-intergenerational-earnings-persistence.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Malin Lindkvist (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifagvse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.