TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Laliberté, Jean-William
AU  - Whalley, Alexander
        TI  - Social Connections and the Persistence of Income Across Generations
        PY  - 2026/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18691
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18691
        AB  - We use matched parent-child-employer-employee data from Canada, linked to detailed educational records, to quantify the contribution of social connections to employers to intergenerational income mobility. Sorting across employers accounts for roughly a third of the transmission of income across generations. To estimate the impact of social connections on differential representation across employers, we compare classmates -- those with the same degree from the same institution -- who have different social connections. We find social connections in the labor market explain about 15% of the firm-sorting component of the intergenerational income rank-rank relationship, about a third the explanatory power of education.
        KW  - social connections
KW  - intergenerational mobility
        ER  -