Showing papers by "Anders Björklund published in 2006"

The Origins of Intergenerational Associations: Lessons from Swedish Adoption Data

Abstract: We use unique Swedish data with information on adopted children's biological and adoptive parents to estimate intergenerational mobility associations in earnings and education. We argue that the impact from biological parents captures broad prebirth factors, including genes and prenatal environment, and the impact from adoptive parents represents broad postbirth factors, such as childhood environment. We find that both pre- and postbirth factors contribute to intergenerational earnings and education transmissions, and that prebirth factors are more important for mother's education and less important for father's income. We also find some evidence for a positive interaction effect between postbirth environment and prebirth factors.

American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States

Abstract: We develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyze differences in intergenerational earnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as well as fathers and daughters using both mobility matrices and regression and correlation coefficients. Our results suggest that all countries exhibit substantial earnings persistence across generations, but with statistically significant differences across countries. Mobility is lower in the U.S. than in the U.K., where it is lower again compared to the Nordic countries. Persistence is greatest in the tails of the distributions and tends to be particularly high in the upper tails: though in the U.S. this is reversed with a particularly high likelihood that sons of the poorest fathers will remain in the lowest earnings quintile. This is a challenge to the popular notion of "American exceptionalism." The U.S. also differs from the Nordic countries in its very low likelihood that sons of the highest earners will show downward "long-distance" mobility into the lowest earnings quintile. In this, the U.K. is more similar to the U.S.

Does family policy affect fertility

Abstract: From the mid-1960s to around 1980, Sweden extended its family policies that provide financial and in-kind support to families with children very quickly. The benefits were closely tied to previous work experience. Thus, women born in the 1950s faced markedly different incentives when making fertility choices compared to women born only 15–20 years earlier. This paper examines the evolution of completed fertility patterns for Swedish women born in 1925–1958 and makes comparisons to women in neighbouring countries where the policies were not extended as much as in Sweden. The results suggest that the extension of the policy raised the level of fertility, shortened the spacing of births, and induced fluctuations in the period fertility rates, but it did not change the negative relationship between women’s educational level and completed fertility.

Development of the mesencephalic dopaminergic neuron system is compromised in the absence of neurogenin 2

Abstract: Neurogenin 2 (Ngn2) is a proneural gene involved in neuronal differentiation and subtype specification in various regions of the nervous system. In the ventral midbrain, Ngn2 is expressed in a spatiotemporal pattern that correlates with the generation of mesencephalic dopaminergic (mesDA) neurons. We show here that lack of Ngn2 impairs the development of mesDA neurons, such that less than half of the normal mesDA neuron number remain in Ngn2 mutant mice at postnatal stages. Analysis of Ngn2 mutant mice during mesDA neurogenesis show that medially located precursors are formed but are arrested in their differentiation at a stage when they have not yet acquired the characteristics of mesDA neuron precursors. Loss of Ngn2 function appears to specifically affect the generation of DA neurons, as the development of other types of neurons within the ventral midbrain is unaltered. Ngn2 is the first example of a gene expressed in progenitors in the ventricular zone of the mesDA neuron domain that is essential for proper mesDA neuron differentiation, and whose loss of function causes impaired mesDA neurogenesis without other major abnormalities in the ventral midbrain.

Parental Separation and Children's Educational Attainment: A Siblings Analysis on Swedish Register Data

Abstract: Parental Separation and Children's Educational Attainment: A Siblings Analysis on Swedish Register Data

Reply: Rate of progression determines the clinical outcome after neural transplantation in Parkinson's disease

Abstract: Sir, we would like to thank Dr Linazasoro for his interesting comments to our paper (Piccini et al ., 2005). On the basis of our PET finding of a simultaneous occurrence of degenerative and regenerative changes in the dopaminergic system of grafted Parkinson's disease patients, he suggests that rate of disease progression may …