Inequality, intergenerational mobility and early childhood

Course leader
Kjell Salvanes, Professor, NHH Norwegian School of Economics

Over the last decades, most countries have experienced increased social inequalities along many dimensions, including education, employment, income, physical and mental health. These changes are all critical for the well-being of individuals and their families.

Coinciding with the increase in social inequality, many societies have experienced that the behavioral problems, educational and labour market outcomes have been widening more for men than for women. Importantly, a growing literature across many fields, has documented that the socioeconomic gradient shows up early in life, and the gap continues to grow into adulthood, and the gap persists across generations.

This course will focus on the literature aiming at understanding the role of early childhood Development and early childhood Investments, and how this plays out over the life cycle. There will be a strong focus on human Capital investment, and the role of human capital formation in understanding the observer inequality.

Learning outcomes

• Understand the role of human capital formation for childhood inequality and over inequality of the lifecycle
• Get a good understanding of mechanisms for intergenerational inequality
• Understanding the importance of identifying causal mechanism

Credits
Participation at the BSRS is credited under the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Participants submitting an essay, in a form of a publishable manuscript of 10-20 pages, after the end of the summer school will receive 10 ECTS. Deadline for submission will be decided by your course leader.

It is also possible to participate without producing an essay. This will give you 4 ECTS. In order to receive credits, we expect full participation in the course-specific modules, plenary events and roundtables.

Kjell G. Salvanes is a professor in labour economics at NHH, research director at CELE since 2012, and deputy director of the Centre of Excellence FAIR since 2017. Salvanes’ research focus on early investment in children and long-term outcomes. Salvanes' work has been published the leading journals, including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy. From 2012 he has been a Managing Editor of the Economic Journal. He is a research fellow at CEPR, IZA, CEEP (LSE), CES-ifo and HCEO (University of Chicago), and is an elected life-long member of the Norwegian Academy of Science.