Childhood, Schooling and Income Inequality

This paper exploits the richness of SHARELIFE data on household economic resources and cultural background of respondents at the age of 10 to address two main research questions. First, we want to show how disparities in the financial and cultural background during childhood are correlated with disparities in education and income at first job. We focus on educational attainment and incomes at the beginning of the working career because these outcomes are more likely to take place at a stage of the life-cycle relatively close to childhood and youth and to reflect the influence of parental household status. Second, we will study the correlation between income inequality at first job and education controlling for childhood background in order to evaluate to what extent policies promoting education access and longer educational attainment can be of use to reduce income dispersions at the beginning of the working career, once childhood disparities are taken into account.