Understanding intergenerational transmission of deprivation in Spain: Education and marital sorting

Davia, M. Á. and Legazpe, N. (2017): Understanding intergenerational transmission of deprivation in Spain: Education and marital sorting, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 52, 1-14

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on intergenerational transmission of deprivation in Spain by exploring how this phenomenon is shaped by education and marital homogamy. To that aim, a set of univariate, bivariate and trivariate ordered probit models are estimated on a sample of Spanish-born individuals from the module on intergenerational transmission of disadvantages in the Spanish Survey on Living Conditions 2011. We split the sample into two age groups (30–39 and 40–49-year-olds), and find similar levels of intergenerational transmission of deprivation amongst younger cohorts despite their higher educational mobility. Education is more relevant as a channel for the transmission of disadvantages across generations in the younger subsample than in the elder one. Marital sorting has a more relevant impact on the transmission of social disadvantage in the younger group. Finally, in the elder subsample, there seems to be a more genuine (beyond the observed transmission channels) transmission of (dis-)advantage, while in the younger subsample, the observed transmission channels seem to fully explain the inheritance of the risk for material deprivation

Keywords: Intergenerational transmission of deprivation European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Spain Marital sorting Educational expansion Trivariate ordered probit models