Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273811 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. TI 2022-098/V
Publisher: 
Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam
Abstract: 
This paper formulates a simple skill and education model to explain how better access to higher education leads to stronger assortative mating on skills of parents and more polarized skill and earnings distributions of children. Swedish data show that in the second half of the 20th century more skilled students increasingly enrolled in college and ended up with more skilled partners and more skilled children. Exploiting college expansions, we find that better college access increases both skill sorting in couples and skill and earnings inequality among their children. All findings support the notion that rising earnings inequality is, at least in part, supply driven by rising skill inequality.
Subjects: 
Assortative mating
intergenerational mobility
education
earnings inequality
JEL: 
J62
I24
J12
J11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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