%0 Report
        %A Laliberté, Jean-William
%A Whalley, Alexander
        %T Social Connections and the Persistence of Income Across Generations
        %D 2026
        %8 2026 May
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 18691
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18691
        %X 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.
        %K social connections
%K intergenerational mobility