Intergenerational and Life-Course Determinants of Upward Mobility

Offspring originating from families with fewer socioeconomic resources are in a greater risk of entering lower social positions and attaining lower educational qualifications. Also life events in early adulthood may have an effect on socioeconomic attainment. These effects, however, may be weaker among those with higher compared to lower parental background.

This study examines the intergenerational and life-course mechanisms of upward mobility. We observe which life-course characteristics in early adulthood (such as educational attainments, unemployment, living arrangements, marital status and health) decrease the risk of entering upper non-manual social class among those who originate from other social classes. Second, the contribution of factors indicating parental resources is analyzed in order to find out whether higher parental background protects from the effect of risky life-course characteristics.

The longitudinal register-based data-set used in this study are a representative 11 % sample of the whole Finnish population. We follow a birth cohort born between 1973 and 1977 from 1987 till 2007: a 20-year follow-up from adolescence till the age of 30+ offers a chance to estimate the processes of accumulating disadvantages among individuals and households. Analyses will be conducted in event history model framework. Our objective is to broaden the perspective on intergenerational transmission of inequalities by describing the life-course mechanisms of occupational attainment in more detail.