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Journal article

Accounting for intergenerational income persistence: noncognitive skills, ability and education


We analyse in detail the factors that lead to intergenerational persistence among sons, where this is measured as the association between childhood family income and later adult earnings. We seek to account for the level of income persistence in the 1970 BCS cohort and also to explore the decline in mobility in the UK between the 1958 NCDS cohort and the 1970 cohort. The mediating factors considered are cognitive skills, non‐cognitive traits, educational attainment and labour market attachment. Changes in the relationships between these variables, parental income and earnings are able to explain over 80% of the rise in intergenerational persistence across the cohorts.


Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Lindsey Macmillan

1 April 2007


The Economic Journal 117(519) , pp.C43-C60, 2007


DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02034.x

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02034.x

This Journal article is published under the centre's Community Wellbeing programme.