Gökçe Uysal Kolaşin ve Merve Yiğit Yontar
The recent debate on intergenerational social mobility is an important question also for Turkey. Intergenerational social mobility is directly related to the equality of opportunities in a society. In a society with low intergenerational social mobility, an individual’s socioeconomic status depends heavily on his or her parent’s socioeconomic status. The transmission mechanisms may work through different channels. Access to education may depend on parental resources, social capital accumulated through networks, like family, school, neighborhood, may be an important determinant of labor market outcomes, etc. These transmission mechanisms, if at work, decrease social mobility.
As a measure of intergenerational social mobility, economists study the relationship between an individual’s education and parent’s education, an individual’s wages and parents’ wages and an individual’s wages and parents’ education. This research note is the first attempt at studying intergenerational mobility using Household Labor Survey data. We find that parents’ education remains to be an important factor determining an individual’s wages even when other factors such as individual’s education, experience etc. are controlled for. In other words, among two individuals who have the same labor market characteristics such as education, experience, seniority, job environment etc. the individual whose father is at least high school graduate earns 10 percent higher wages and the individual whose mother is at least primary school graduate earns 2.9 percent higher wages. These findings indicate that intergenerational mobility is not high in Turkey.
doc. ResearchBrief128
pdf. ResearchBrief128