【AEW webinar】The Effects of Business Taxation on Local Labor Markets, Firms and Workers & Like Father Like Son? Social Engineering and Intergenerational
演講者簡介 : Professor Schönberg received her Ph.D. in Economics from University College London in 2004. She is currently a Professor of Economics at University College London. Her research interests are in Applied Microeconomics, in particular Labor Economics.
Professor Fan received her Ph.D. in Economics from London School of Economics in 2015. She is currently an Assistant Professor at National University of Singapore. Her research interests are Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, Labour Economics, Development Economics.
演講摘要 : We estimate the rate of intergenerational mobility in housing consumption in the context of large-scale social engineering programs in Singapore. Using a comprehensive set of data on residential demographics merged with the real housing transaction records covering 149,745 parents-child pairs from 1995 to 2018, we find upward mobility for children born to grass-roots parents, downward mobility for children of middle-class parents, and high persistence for children of upper-class parents. Affordable public housing and high-quality public education are evident to promote intergenerational mobility in housing consumption for children born to grass-root parents. Those parents save from housing consumption and invest in children’s human capital; quality education further promotes their upward mobility. Possible reason for the downward intergenerational mobility of children born to middle-class parents lies in financial constraints in children’s human capital investment or difficulties in sorting into good neighborhoods squeezed from high housing consumption. Our results shed light on the design of social engineering programs for countries aiming to tackle social inequality using public policies.
