Parental Time Investment and Intergenerational Mobility

Abstract

This paper investigates parental time investment in children prior to formal schooling as a source of intergenerational income persistence in the U.S. I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model where lifetime income endogenously persists across generations through multiple channels. My model replicates a series of important untargeted aspects of the data including the U.S. income quintile transition matrix. I find that the parental time investment channel accounts for nearly 40 percent of the observed intergenerational income persistence. Policy experiments suggest that e¤ective ways of improving mobility should focus on narrowing discrepancies in the quantity and quality of parental time investments.