We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-economic Panel to calculate comparable measures of intergenera-tional correlations of earnings, hours, and education in the United States and in Germany. Our results indicate that there is remarkable similarity across the two countries in the correlations of earnings and of annual work hours of fathers and sons. The corresponding correlations for daughters and mothers are stronger in the United States than Germany, most likely due to the greater labor market integration of women in the United States. We also find that intergenerational correlations in educational attainment are considerably stronger in the United States.

Kenneth A. Couch is an assistant professor of economics, University of Connecticut, and Thomas A. Dunn is an assistant professor of economics and Senior Research Associate, Center for Policy Research, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University. This research has been supported in part by a National Institute on Aging Post-Doctoral Fellowship received by Couch. The authors thank John Phil-lips and Robert Weathers for research assistance and Ann Wicks, Jodi Woodson, and Martha Bonney for help with the manuscript. Joachim Frick at the Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung was tremendously helpful inpreparing data. Richard Burkhauser, Robert Reville, Gert Wagner, participants at the Syracuse University PSID-GSOEP Equivalent Data File User's Workshop, and two anonymous referees provided useful comments. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in June 1997 and through May 2000 from Kenneth A. Couch, Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1063.

© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

US ISSN 0022-166X

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