What we brought with us and what we achieved. Decomposition of income inequality in 27 European countries by social origin and other factors
letöltésTóth, István György; Csathó, Ábel
What we brought with us and what we achieved. Decomposition of income inequality in 27 European countries by social origin and other factors
In our research paper we analyze how parental background influence financial achievements. We first explore, with the use of the EU-SILC dataset what differences we can detect across European countries by the effect of parental origin on incomes. We also contrast these findings to similar country comparisons presented in the recent mobility and inequality of opportunity literature. Secondly, we present a specific (to our knowledge, unique to date) analysis of how the effect of parental origin differs by income ranks in the distribution. We find the level of odds for parental education on getting ahead high in some East-Central European countries and some Southern tier countries. Thirdly, we analyze what macro factors can be associated to the cross-country differentials in levels and patterns of parental effects. We find that the larger the employment rate, the share of the higher educated and the lower the share of the lower classes, the constraint of circumstances on getting ahead in society are at the lower level. Political inclusiveness and transparency also matter: the level of unjustifiable inequalities is lower in countries where the quality of the governance is better, where the share of lower class people is lower.