Working Group: Cross-National Research on the Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage (CRITA)

The greater the disparity between a society’s rich and poor the greater the inequality in the advantages enjoyed by their children. The United States, with the highest rate of inequality among advanced economies, has the lowest level of economic mobility from one generation to the next. But more surprisingly, perhaps, the United States has even less intergenerational mobility than its high level of inequality would predict. Other countries have shown more success at moderating the effects of inequality on mobility – possibly by making public investments in education, health, and family well-being that offset the private advantages of the wealthy. What can the United States learn from these other countries about how to provide children from disadvantaged backgrounds an equal chance in life? If some countries are doing a better job at equalizing opportunity, at what stage in individual development do the effects of public investments show up? Are early investments in child health and family well-being of primary importance, or are school systems that impact individuals at later stages more effective? These are the motivating questions of the third stage of the Foundation’s Social Inequality Program, the Cross-National Research on the Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage, launched in November 2009.
 
Led by John Ermisch of the University of Sussex, U.K, Markus Jäntti of Stockholm University, and Timothy Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thirty-eight researchers in ten countries are conducting fourteen coordinated studies on how family resources are correlated with the development of mobility-relevant skills and how those relationships may differ over the life course and between countries. What is the relationship, for example, between parental socioeconomic status and children’s cognitive skills? Do these relationships change as children enter and progress through school? Initial results indicate that earlier interventions can have the greatest impact. Data from France, for example, show that preschool attendance has significant effects on later-life outcomes, such as educational achievement and job attainment.
The overall study has important longitudinal and cross-national components, allowing the researchers a deeper understanding of national policies that can limit the effects of inequality on mobility. A comprehensive edited volume detailing the study's research and results will be forthcoming in Fall 2011.