Ricerc@Sapienza

This work analyses mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission of inequality in Italy by exploiting the waves from 2000 to 2016 of the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and
Wealth. Using fathers’ education as a proxy of parental background, we show that 1-year increase in fathers’ education is associated with a 3.6% increase in children’s earnings. Contrary to the
widespread idea that the intergenerational transmission is only related to parents’ investment in their children’s education, large background-related advantages (+1.8% for each year of parental

The literature on intergenerational inequality has not inquired so far the role that market competition can play in the intergenerational transmission process. In this article we assess this role from both an empirical and a theoretical perspective. From the empirical side, using a panel dataset on Italian workers, we find that the parental background wage premium significantly decreases when sector competition increases.

This study considers the enrolment at university and the subsequent possible dropout as a piece of the school-to-work transition and asks whether it improves or worsens the labour market outcomes a few years after graduation from the high school.