Assessing Intergenerational Earnings Persistence Among German Workers

In this study we assess the relationship between father and son earnings among (West) German Workers. To reduce the lifecycle and attenuation bias a novel sampling procedure is developed and applied to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2006. Our preferred point estimate indicates that about 1/3 of the earnings differential in the labor market has been passed on from the generation of fathers to their sons