Family influence on early career outcomes in seven European countries

This note uses ECHP data to study the extent to which family characteristics affect the early career outcomes (earnings) of children in seven European countries: Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Austria. The overall importance of family influence on earnings is assessed by computing earnings correlations between siblings using the eight waves of European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data on siblings. Portugal is the country with the highest sibling correlation in earnings, followed by Italy, Greece, Spain and France. Germany and Austria prove to have very low sibling correlations in earnings. The correlation increases when the same gender sibling samples are used in almost all countries. These findings suggest that the earnings correlation of siblings of different genders is lower because of labor-market discrimination against females