General Seminar - Warn N. Lekfuangfu

Aspirational Mobility among Teenagers: Global Patterns and the Great Gatsby Curve Co-authored with Milica Vranić (Carlos III Madrid) & Andros Kourtellos (University of Cyprus)
We document the intergenerational transmission of aspirations among teenagers in more than 90 countries. Using microdata from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we estimate rank-rank relationships between teenagers’ expected occupations at age 30 and their parents’ occupations. We then compare cross-country measures of absolute and relative mobility in occupational and educational aspirations among Generation Z with realised intergenerational mobility among the preceding generation. Aspirational mobility and realised mobility move in opposite directions across countries. Finally, we construct an Aspirational Great Gatsby Curve and show that higher inequality is associated with greater mobility in teenagers’ occupational and educational aspirations. Unlike the conventional Great Gatsby relationship for realised outcomes, the Aspirational Great Gatsby Curve is negatively sloped, indicating that higher inequality is associated with weaker intergenerational persistence in aspirations.