Intergenerational income mobility: Gender, Partnerships and Poverty in the UK

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This important new work looks to fill an 'evidence deficit' within the literature on intergenerational economic mobility by investigating intergenerational income mobility for two groups who are often overlooked in existing research: women and the poorest in society. To do this, the research will make two methodological advancements to previous work: First, moving to focus on the family unit in the second generation and total family resources rather than individual labour market earnings and second, looking across adulthood to observe partnership, fertility and poverty dynamics rather than a point-in-time static view of these important factors. Specifically it will ask four research questions:1) What is the relationship between family incomes of parents in childhood and family incomes of daughters throughout adulthood? The majority of previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have focused on the relationship between parents' income in childhood and sons' prime-age labour market earnings. Women have therefore been consistently disregarded due to difficulties observing prime-age labour market earnings for women. This is because women often exit the labour market for fertility reasons, and the timing of this exit and the duration of the spell out of the labour market are related to both parental childhood income and current labour market earnings. This means that previous studies that have focused on employed women only are not representative of the entire population of women. By combining our two advancements, considering total family income and looking across adulthood for women, we can minimise these issues. The life course approach enables us to observe average resources across a long window of time, dealing with issues of temporary labour market withdrawal, while the use of total family income gives the most complete picture of resources available to the family unit including partner's earnings and income from other sources, including benefits. 2) What role do partnerships and assortative mating play in this process across the life course?The shift to focusing on the whole family unit emphasises the importance of partnerships including when they occur and breakdown and who people partner with in terms of education and current labour market earnings. Previous research on intergenerational income mobility in the UK has suggested an important role for who people partner with but has been limited to only focusing on those in partnerships. This work will advance our understanding of partnership dynamics by looking across adulthood at both those in partnerships and at the importance of family breakdown and lone parenthood in this relationship. 3) What is the extent of intergenerational poverty in the UK, and does this persist through adulthood? The previous focus on individuals' labour market earnings has often neglected to consider intergenerational income mobility for the poorest in society: those without labour market earnings for lengthy periods of time who rely on other income from transfers and benefits. The shift in focus to total family resources and the life course approach will allow us to assess whether those who grew up in poor households are more likely to experience persistent poverty themselves in adulthood. 4) What is the role of early skills, education and labour market experiences, including job tenure and progression, in driving these newly estimated relationships? Finally our proposed work will consider the potential mechanisms for these new estimates of intergenerational income mobility for women and the poorest in society for the first time and expand our understanding of potential mechanisms for men. While our previous work showed the importance of early skills and education in transmitting inequality across generations for males, this new work will also consider the role of labour market experiences including job tenure and promotions as part of the process.