Intergenerational Mobility in Welfare: Wages and Amenities

Measures of intergenerational mobility primarily focus on earnings and often overlook substantial heterogeneity in job amenities. We propose a novel measure of intergenera-tional welfare mobility, “value-value” slope, including both pecuniary and non-pecuniary value of a job. We apply a revealed preference approach to construct common rankings of jobs based on worker flows. Using Danish administrative data, we document that there is 31% more intergenerational mobility than earnings-based mobility measures alone would suggest: the value-value slope is 0.105 and the wage-premia slope is 0.151. Importantly, this aggregate pattern masks striking gender differences: comparing within each gender, daughters exhibit 38% greater mobility in total welfare than in wages; for sons, the two measures nearly align. Gender differences trace to how family background shapes educa-tional and occupational paths. Daughters pursue academic tracks and enter white-collar jobs with similar amenities at high rates regardless of background. Sons’ paths are more stratified: those from disadvantaged families disproportionately follow vocational routes into blue-collar work, where both wages and amenities differ sharply from the professional jobs that advantaged sons obtain.