After decades of research on the transmission of socio-economic status from parents to their children, there is growing interest in the extent to which these transmission processes extend beyond two generations. For instance, how similar is the socio-economic attainment of individual not only to that of their parents but also their grandparents? This talk provides new estimates of three-generational associations for a broad range of socio-economic outcomes, namely education, occupation, earnings, income and wealth, based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). I apply two complementary approaches, one "horizontal", which estimates cousin correlations (the three-generational equivalent to sibling correlations) and captures the overall degree of inequality in opportunity related to grandparental origins; and one "vertical" to trace these multigenerational influences to specific socio-economic characteristics of grandparents. Also, I begin to document sources of heterogeneity in multigenerational associations that point towards some of the underlying social mechanisms.


Fabian Pfeffer received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a tenure-track Research Assistant Professor at the Survey Research Center and a Co-Investigator of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. He has received funding for his research from the Russell Sage Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, and other sources.