Estimating the extent of intergenerational mobility and understanding how it differs between societies is of long-standing interest to economists and other social scientists. The recent development of new complete count census databases, and “big historical data” of all kinds, has revitalized historical research on these topics.
Despite being a leading example of a land-abundant, expanding settler economy, little is known about Canadian mobility patterns before the 1950s.
Professor Chris Minns and co-authors Luiza Antonie, Kris Inwood, and Fraser Summerfield use new linked full-count census data for Canada to document intergenerational occupational mobility from 1871 to1901, providing a first glimpse of father-son occupational continuity patterns prior to the 1950s.
The authors find significant differences between Canadian regions and language groups, with linguistic minorities experiencing notably lower rates of intergenerational mobility. International comparisons place Canada midway between other economies in the Americas and the most mobile European societies. Decompositions of overall mobility show that the Canadian experience shared the New World feature of high mobility from manual occupations, but also the Old-World feature of greater persistence in white collar jobs.
Read the full article here: Antonie, Luiza, Inwood, Kris, Minns, Chris and Summerfield, Fraser (2022) Intergenerational mobility in a mid-Atlantic economy: Canada,1871-1901.The Journal of Economic History, 82 (4). ISSN 0022-0507
