10.17045/sthlmuni.5896522.v1
Max Thaning
Max
Thaning
Martin Hällsten
Martin
Hällsten
The End of Dominance? Evaluating Measures of Family Background in Stratification Research
Stockholm University
2018
The Department of Sociology Working Paper Series
Sociologiska institutionen
Department of Sociology
Sociology
2018-02-19 09:12:20
Preprint
https://su.figshare.com/articles/preprint/The_End_of_Dominance_Evaluating_Measures_of_Family_Background_in_Stratification_Research/5896522
We analyze how to best combine information on both parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) in intergenerational research. This can be done by utilizing separate measures for either parents, taking averages over parents, or only using the highest value across parents – the latter commonly referred to as the dominance approach. We assess how much of the sibling correlations in education, occupation, and earnings that are explained by parents’ SES in the same dimensions using the different operationalizations. The dominance approach performs substantially poorer than the other models. We end with a discussion of the implications for research on mobility and using SES background as a confounder.<br>