This paper investigates to what extent assortative mating contributes to intergenerational earnings persistence. I use an errors-in-variables model to demonstrate how pooling of partners’ ‘potential’ earnings affects intergenerational earnings persistence, and simulate persistence under different assumptions about assortative mating and women’s earnings distribution. Using Swedish data on cohorts born 1945–1965, I show that a substantial decline in marital sorting has contributed little to lowering intergenerational persistence. Variations in marital sorting must be large to affect intergenerational mobility to a great extent. Instead, the relative earnings distributions of men and women, in combination with sorting, are important for intergenerational persistence.

中文翻译：

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婚姻分选对代际社会经济持久性有多大贡献？

本文调查了分类交配对代际收入持久性的贡献。我使用一个变量误差模型来展示合作伙伴“潜在”收入的汇集如何影响代际收入的持续性，并在关于分类交配和女性收入分布的不同假设下模拟持续性。使用瑞典出生于 1945-1965 年的队列数据，我表明婚姻排序的大幅下降对降低代际持久性几乎没有贡献。婚姻排序的变化必须很大，才能在很大程度上影响代际流动。相反，男性和女性的相对收入分布与排序相结合，对于代际持久性很重要。