Using data on fifteen countries based on the harmonization of IALS and PIAC data, we provide a cross-national analysis of the evolution of the role of educational attainment and cognitive skills as mediators of intergenerational inequalities between 1994 and 2015. We find that the association between parents’ education and children’s earnings is large and highly stable over time in most countries, except for Scandinavian countries, where we detect a downward trend. Conversely, the United States stands out as the country displaying the largest earning differentials by parents’ education and as the only country where these differentials increased over time. We demonstrate that educational attainment and skills contributed in different ways to the persistence of these intergenerational inequalities. On the one hand, educational equalization was compensated by increasing earning returns to education in several countries. On the other hand, the association between parents’ education and cognitive skills, as well as the related earning returns, stayed largely unchanged across these two decades.

中文翻译：

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家长受教育程度、教育程度、技能和收入：十五个国家的趋势分析

我们使用基于 IALS 和 PIAC 数据统一的 15 个国家的数据，对 1994 年至 2015 年间教育程度和认知技能作为代际不平等中介因素的作用演变进行了跨国分析。我们发现，在大多数国家，父母的教育和子女的收入都很高，并且随着时间的推移高度稳定，但斯堪的纳维亚国家除外，我们发现这些国家呈下降趋势。相反，美国是因父母受教育程度而表现出最大收入差异的国家，也是唯一一个这种差异随着时间的推移而扩大的国家。我们证明，教育程度和技能以不同的方式导致这些代际不平等的持续存在。一方面，一些国家通过增加教育收入回报来补偿教育均等化。另一方面，父母的教育程度和认知技能以及相关的收入回报之间的关联在这二十年中基本保持不变。