Intergenerational Mobility of Earnings and Income among Sons and Daughters in Vietnam

In this thesis, I investigate intergenerational mobility of earnings and income among sons and daughters in Vietnam. In particular, my objective is to estimate intergenerational elasticity (IGE) of sons’ and daughters’ individual earnings, individual income, and family income with respective to father’s individual earnings. The two-sample two-stage least squares (TS2SLS) estimation is employed to achieve the research objective using two primary samples of father-son pairs and father-daughter pairs from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys (VHLSS) of 2012 and one secondary sample from Vietnam Living Standard Surveys (VLSS) of 1997-98. My results show that the baseline IGE estimates of Vietnamese sons are 0.361, 0.394 and 0.567 for individual earnings, individual income, and family income, respectively. For Vietnamese daughters, the baseline IGE estimates are 0.284, 0.333 and 0.522 for individual earnings, individual income, and family income, respectively. These IGE estimates explicitly reveal that Vietnam has the intermediate degrees of individual earnings and individual income mobility, and the low degree of family income mobility cross generations for both sons and daughters by the international comparison.