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

这项重要的新工作旨在通过调查现有研究中经常被忽视的两个群体的代际收入流动性来填补文献中关于代际经济流动性的“证据不足”：妇女和社会中最贫穷的群体。为此，这项研究将在方法上对以前的工作进行两次改进：第一，将重点放在第二代的家庭单位和家庭总资源，而不是个人劳动力市场收入；第二，着眼于成年人，观察伙伴关系、生育率和贫困的动态变化，而不是对这些重要因素的时间点静态看法。具体地说，它将提出四个研究问题：1)父母童年时期的家庭收入与女儿成年后的家庭收入之间有什么关系？以前关于代际收入流动性的大多数研究都集中在父母童年收入和儿子在劳动力市场黄金年龄的收入之间的关系。因此，由于很难观察到妇女在黄金年龄劳动力市场的收入，妇女一直被忽视。这是因为妇女往往因生育原因退出劳动力市场，这种退出的时机和退出劳动力市场的时间长短都与父母的童年收入和目前劳动力市场的收入有关。这意味着，以前只关注就业妇女的研究并不能代表整个妇女群体。通过将我们的两个进步结合起来，考虑到家庭总收入和展望女性的成年，我们可以将这些问题降到最低。生命周期方法使我们能够在很长一段时间内观察平均资源，处理劳动力市场临时退出的问题，而家庭总收入的使用使我们能够最全面地了解家庭单位可用的资源，包括伴侣的收入和其他来源的收入，包括福利。2)在整个生命过程中，伴侣关系和各种交配在这一过程中扮演什么角色？向关注整个家庭单位的转变强调了伙伴关系的重要性，包括伙伴关系发生和破裂的时间，以及在教育和当前劳动力市场收入方面与谁合作。英国之前关于代际收入流动性的研究表明，伴侣在其中扮演着重要的角色，但仅限于关注伴侣中的人。这项工作将促进我们对伙伴关系动态的理解，通过观察成年后伙伴关系中的那些人，以及家庭破裂和单亲父母在这种关系中的重要性。3)英国代际贫困的程度如何？这种贫困会持续到成年吗？以前对个人劳动力市场收入的关注往往忽视了考虑到社会中最贫穷群体的代际收入流动性，即那些长期没有劳动力市场收入、依赖转移和福利的其他收入的人。将重点转移到家庭资源总量和生命周期方法将使我们能够评估那些在贫困家庭长大的人在成年后是否更有可能自己经历持续的贫困。4)早期技能、教育和劳动力市场经验，包括工作年限和晋升，在推动这些新估计的关系方面发挥了什么作用？最后，我们拟议的工作将首次审议对妇女和社会中最贫穷者代际收入流动性的这些新估计数的潜在机制，并扩大我们对男性潜在机制的理解。虽然我们之前的工作表明了早期技能和教育在传递男性代际不平等方面的重要性，但这项新工作也将考虑劳动力市场经验的作用，包括工作任期和晋升，作为这一过程的一部分。

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.