Multidimensional Social Mobility and Pathways to Upward Mobility in Austria

Research on intergenerational social mobility clarifies to what extent and how parental background shapes opportunities and attainments along the lifecycle. While several papers have documented the evolution of income inequality in Austria, comprehensive evidence on intergenerational social mobility (ISM) in Austria and, in particular, its underlying drivers does not exist. The MOBILTY-PATH project proposes to fill this gap.

First, MOBILTY-PATH gathers data for providing novel evidence on the extent of and heterogeneity in ISM across multiple dimensions. Second, it gains insights into the mechanisms underlying ISM by tracing children’s life-cycle outcomes by parental background. MOBILITY-PATH aims to shed light into the extent to which the luck of being born into a specific family is mitigated or aggravated by early-childhood factors such as neighborhoods and schooling, whether broad-access vocational training schemes and labor market conditions can lead to intergenerational (upward) mobility later on in life, and what role tertiary education institutions such as Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) can play in facilitating mobility.

MOBILITY-PATH can answer these questions by a novel combination of various individual-level administrative and register datasets which will be available through the newly established Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC). Furthermore, MOBILITY-PATH proposes research designs tailored to Austria’s institutional landscape to understand causal mechanisms behind ISM in Austria and to contribute to salient open questions in ISM research.

MOBILITY-PATH provides pioneering evidence by investigating the extent of and heterogeneity in ISM in education, occupation, earnings and individual and family income. In addition to insights at the country level, our detailed data allows us to assess ISM also at the level of districts and communities in Austria, and counting districts within Vienna, and for population subgroups defined by gender and migration background. The resulting dataset will be made available via an interactive webpage, the Social Mobility Atlas Austria. Second, MOBILITY-PATH will investigate the causal effect of neighborhoods across Austria on ISM and study to what extent these effects are driven by schools. In Austria, 40 percent of young adults enter the labor market after compulsory schooling via vocational training schemes. Part three of the MOBILITY-PATH project focuses on the impact of vocational training on ISM. As the demand for vocational training occupations depends on economic conditions, MOBILITY-PATH proposes to investigate the causal link between trade-induced changes in the demand for different occupational skills and ISM among those who completed vocational training. Finally, obtaining tertiary education in Austria is a main pathway to higher incomes. MOBILITY-PATH will examine if attending and completing a degree at a UAS increases upward mobility in education and income, and if so, for whom.