Nikodem Szewczyk (Norwegian School of Economics)
Aline B
Estimates of intergenerational economic persistence typically rely on biological or adoptive parentchild links observed within stable nuclear families, thereby abstracting from the dynamic and often complex nature of family structure. Leveraging linked administrative registers, we construct time-varying measures of children's exposure to both biological parents and stepparents over the course of childhood. We show that restricting attention to biological ties understates the persistence of human capital by 1231 percent. Moreover, stepfather-stepchild associations are stronger when stepfathers exhibit greater residential and economic commitment and when biological fathers are geographically distant, consistent with the hypothesis that stepparents exert direct environmental influences on children's outcomes.