Abstract

The standard concept of intergenerational mobility tracks movement up the occupational or income ladders but ignores the costs incurred along the way. An example of such costs arises from the career-family tradeoff. We argue that unequal career costs—meaning a steeper tradeoff for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds—lead income mobility to overstate welfare mobility: upward mobility in professional terms translates into smaller welfare mobility as it comes at the expense of personal life. We first develop the theoretical model to evaluate the merits of this argument and its underlying hypothesis. We then empirically test the key hypothesis using Swedish data. We find that individuals from low-income families sacrifice more of their family life to achieve higher lifetime income, delaying childbearing, having fewer children, and spending less time on publicly provided parental leave per child. These unequal costs reflect a more arduous path to success, shaped by time and spatial constraints, which result in a trial-and-error life trajectory rather than guided success. Disadvantaged achievers study longer in less remunerative fields, although they are more cognitively and non-cognitively skilled at age 18, further delaying family formation, and tend to live farther from their birthplace and parents, increasing the cost of parenting. To connect theory and evidence, we estimate welfare mobility using a sibling comparison design and find a substantial divergence between income and welfare mobility.