Social mobility in Germany

We characterize intergenerational mobility in Germany using census data on educational attainment and parental income for 526,000 children. Motivated by Germany's tracking system in secondary education, our measure of opportunity is the A-Level degree, a requirement for access to university. A 10 percentile increase in parental income rank is associated with a 5.2 percentage point increase in the A-Level share. This gradient remained unchanged for the birth cohorts 1980–1996, despite a large-scale expansion of upper secondary education. At the regional level, there exists substantial variation in mobility estimates. Local characteristics, rather than sorting patterns, account for most of these differences.