OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers

ISSN :
1815-199X (online)
DOI :
10.1787/1815199x
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This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected labour market, social policy and migration studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.
 

The Welfare Effects of Social Mobility You or your institution have access to this content

Authors:
Justina A.V. Fischer
Publication Date
16 Sep 2009
Bibliographic information
No.:
93
Pages
56
DOI
10.1787/221272634852

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The question whether a socially mobile society is conducive to subjective well-being (SWB) has rarely been investigated. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the SWB effects of intergenerational earnings mobility and equality in education at the societal level. Using socio-demographic information on 44 000 individuals in 30 OECD countries obtained from the World Values Survey, this study shows that living in a socially mobile society is conducive to individual life satisfaction. Differentiating between perceived and actual social mobility, we find that both exert rather independent effects, particularly in their interplay with income inequality. We identify a positive interaction of perceived social mobility that mitigates its overall SWB lowering effect, supporting Alesina et al. (2004). In contrast, a high degree of actual social mobility yields an overall impact of income inequality that is SWB lowering, while for low social mobility the effect of inequality is positive. These interactions hold stronger for pre-transfer than post-transfer income inequality. Actual social mobility appears to be appreciated only by conservative persons, while leftist oriented individuals are indifferent. Robustness is tested using a world sample.
JEL Classification:
  • A14: General Economics and Teaching / General Economics / Sociology of Economics
  • D31: Microeconomics / Distribution / Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
  • D63: Microeconomics / Welfare Economics / Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
  • I31: Health, Education, and Welfare / Welfare and Poverty / General Welfare
  • J62: Labor and Demographic Economics / Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies / Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility