Intergenerational Socioeconomic Mobility across Three Generations

Aslan Zorlu , University of Amsterdam
Wouter van Gent, UvA
Gelske van Daalen, CBS

This paper examines socioeconomic mobility over three generations of ‘migrants’ and seeks to distinguish the effects of parental wealth and ethnicity. Using rich register data, the study aims to provide empirical evidence on socioeconomic assimilation outcomes of descendants of immigrants who pre-dominantly arrived in the Netherlands in the post- WW II period. We study socioeconomic mobility across migrant generations for migrant groups that have potentially experienced various profiles of assimilation due to their initial sociocultural distance from the Dutch society, such as, German, Indonesian, Suriname, Turkish and Moroccan. We investigate differentials in education and labour market outcomes of second and third generations, with an emphasis on intergenerational transmission of wealth and spatial distance between parents and children, acknowledging the geographical concentration of immigrants.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 39. Human Capital, Wealth and Inter-Generational Transmission