Intergenerational mobility in Europe: evidence from ECHP

In this paper I provide a new evidence on cross-country comparison of intergenerational mobility using the European Community Household Panel. Although this data-set produces estimation that suffer of many potential biases, such as life cycle bias due to the young age of children, if the distortions are similar across countries, then the results can be useful and produce a better understanding of the forces that shape different societies. Comparing 12 European countries, I found that Mediterranean countries together with Portugal and Ireland are more immobile both in earnings and education. I find no relation between the income elasticity and earnings returns to human capital of a country, but public expenditure in tertiary education seems to be negatively related to income elasticity and there seems to be a positive relationship between income elasticity and the strictness of the employment protection law. Educational mobility seems to be affected by the performance of the education system measured by the proportion of students fall below given benchmarks of educational achievement, it is not affected by the pupil teacher ratio in primary and secondary schools and by the percentage of students enrolled in private schools.