Seminar: Aline Bütikofer - Intergenerational Persistence in Blended Families

Event details

Author: Aline Bütikofer (NHH)

Abstract: Family structures have become increasingly complex, yet most studies of intergenerational mobility rely on static, biological parent–child links. This paper examines how stepparents and dynamic family transitions shape the transmission of income and education across generations. Using linked administrative registers, we construct child-centered, year-by-year measures of family structure that capture the timing and duration of biological and non-biological ties. Extending extended-family approaches to modern blended families, we incorporate multiple stepparents into our measurement of intergenerational links. We find that persistence in human capital is substantially stronger in blended families than implied by conventional biological regressions. Focusing solely on biological ties underestimates overall persistence by at least 20%. The results are robust to controls for shared schools and neighborhoods, highlighting the importance of accounting for fluid family boundaries when measuring intergenerational transmission.

Host: Matthias Flueckiger (York)

Cluster: Applied Microeconometrics Cluster