Dynastic Inequality Compared: Multigenerational Mobility in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany

In this country comparison setting, we find evidence against a universal law of social mobility. Our results show that the long-run persistence of socioeconomic status and the validity of a first-order Markov chain in the intergenerational transmission of human capital is countryspecific. Furthermore, we find that the direct and independent effect of grandparents_ social status on grandchildren_s status tends to vary by gender and institutional context.