Jonas Helgertz

A growing empirical and theoretical literature has investigated to what extent socioeconomic inequalities are influenced by the outcomes and characteristics of ancestors prior to the parental generation. This paper contributes by examining multigenerational associations of earnings and occupational status in the entire Swedish population born 1968-1976, amounting to over 200,000 three-generation lineages of men and women. The population is followed until 2011, examining to which the strength of the grandfather-grandchild association interacts with theoretically motivated characteristics, including overlapping lifespans, residential proximity and competition for resources, net of the association between parents and children. To the extent that such interactions exist, it would be consistent with a causal multigenerational relationship. While a robust multigenerational association exists, our results fail to lend consistent support to any of the examined interaction, indicating that the relationship is unaffected by both the degree of overlapping lifespans and residential proximity, gauging the closeness of the multigenerational relationship, as well as by the extent to which the grandchild had to compete for the grandfather’s resources with cousins and siblings. Our results therefore do not support the existence of a causal interpretation of the observed associations in socioeconomic outcomes of grandfathers and grandchildren.