Wealth and Poverty Intergenerational Reproduction and Status Attainment

Abstract

Some researches explain intergenerational income mobility in Japan through the paths determined by the effects of parental economic status, which would bring about reproduction of economic status between generations. These paths include both indirect and direct effects: while the former is mediated by the status attainment process, the latter come from parental economic status directly. Other studies on intergenerational poverty transmission suggest the existence of a route for the sequential status that connects parental and child's poverty. However, compared with other family background factors, whether this sequence of effects (or status transmission) from parents is decisive for child's economic differential needs to be verified empirically.

By employing a sample of national data, the results of the analysis show that the patterns deriving from parental economic status are not crucial for the economic gap in the child's generation. The main mechanism determining such differential is as follows: parental education, occupation, and economic status affect child's education; then, child's education influences occupation after leaving school, which in turn affects current occupation; finally, the latter has an effect on the economic status. While the path of the sequential status from parents' low educational and economic status to child's poverty emerges clearly for men, results for women are ambiguous.