"Neuge Abuji Mwohashino"... Inheritance of Professional Jobs Like Doctors and Lawyers

If Dad Has a High-Income Professional Job, Children Also Become 'Professionals'
Researchers Say "Recent Trends Show Stronger Inheritance Patterns"

The inheritance of jobs among high-income professionals is becoming increasingly pronounced. When parents are high-income professionals such as doctors or lawyers, their children are also more likely to become high-income professionals.

According to the policy research report "A Study on the Fairness of Job Allocation among High-Income Professionals" published by the Korea Labor Institute on the 8th, since 2010, the proportion of children working as high-income professionals when their fathers were high-income professionals reached 42.1%.

The research team tracked 11,083 mothers to 13,754 fathers from the raw data of the Korea Labor Panel Survey from the 1st wave (1998) to the 24th wave (2021).

As a result, when the parents' occupation belonged to the first-tier occupational group (professionals, senior executives, and managers), the proportion of children belonging to the first tier was 38.1% for fathers and 40.6% for mothers.

When parents belonged to the second-tier occupational group (clerical workers and technicians), the probability of children belonging to the first tier was 21.7% for fathers and 19.5% for mothers, which is lower than that of the first-tier occupational group. For children whose parents worked in the third-tier occupational group (service and sales workers, farmers and fishermen, simple labor workers), the proportion belonging to the first tier was only 16.9% for fathers and 18.1% for mothers.

In particular, when parents had occupations in the top 50% income bracket within the first tier, the probability that their children would also have first-tier occupations in the top 50% was 18.5% (father) and 25.9% (mother).

Comparing the occupational class mobility between parents and children around 2010, the midpoint of the analysis period, the proportion of fathers and children belonging to the same first tier was 34.9% from 1998 to 2009 but increased to 42.1% from 2010 to 2021.

The proportion of parents and children belonging to the top 50% of the first tier increased sharply from 11.0% (father) and 20.0% (mother) in 1998?2009 to 25.2% (father) and 30.4% (mother) in 2010?2021.

The research team analyzed, "The pattern of intergenerational inheritance of high-income professional jobs between parents and children has become more pronounced in recent periods."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.