Accumulating advantages before birth? Parental age and parental earnings inequalities across childhood

Julia Leesch , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Carla Rowold, Hertie-School
Nicole Hiekel, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Children’s socioeconomic attainment is shaped not only by the level of parental resources they are born into, but also by changes in these resources over time. Yet little is known about how inequalities in the trajectories of parental earnings evolve throughout childhood. Taking the children’s perspective, this study investigates how earnings inequalities within and between mothers and fathers develop following the first birth, and examines whether parental age at childbirth explains inequalities in parental earnings. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study follows both biological parents of first-born children from early childhood to early adulthood (ages 1–16). We employ multilevel growth curve models to capture inequalities in baseline earnings, earnings growth, and earnings volatility as features of the environments children experience. Preliminary results reveal that children’s experience of parental earnings inequality differs by parents’ gender: mothers’ earnings show greater variation in baseline levels and growth rates than fathers’. Parental age at childbirth strongly predicts children’s initial socioeconomic advantage, but these early gaps remain largely stable over time rather than widening. By analysing parental earnings trajectories from the child’s perspective, this study highlights the association between the timing of parenthood and persistent inequalities in the economic conditions that accompany children across their formative years.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session P2. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 2