Jason Beckfield: “Rising inequality is not balanced by intergenerational mobility”

Head shot of Jason Beckfield

Jason Beckfield, our associate director and Harvard sociologist, COMMENTS on a study that documents intergenerational social mobility over the past 165 years, applauding the study’s strengths (e.g., differentiating between relative and absolute mobility; large amount of data) and outlining some of its limits (e.g., ethnicity and gender are weak spots in population composition; lack of explanation).

Working paper: Up, Down & Reciprocal: The Dynamics of Intergenerational Transfers, Family Structure & Health in a Low-Income Context

Harvard Bell Fellow Collin Payne is lead author on a working paper that explores the complex nature of how resources are shared and redistributed within a family in the absence of a public pension system in a rural sub-Saharan African setting.

Having Better-Educated Offspring May Add Years to Parents’ Lives

Harvard RWJF HSS Alum Esther Friedman, PhD, has co-authored a study that suggests that making an investment in children’s higher education may have a big payoff for parents’ lifespan. The study has received media coverage, including this article in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, and this piece in Yahoo News.