New paper by Alina Schmitz and Rasmus Hoffmann
A new paper, authored by Alina Schmitz and Rasmus Hoffmann, published in the Special Issue “Sociology of Age and Ageing: Theoretical and Empirical Challenges (Re-)Visited”, examines how children’s educational success affects their parents’ well-being in later life.
The study examines how children’s educational mobility relates to their parents’ life satisfaction. We find that parents with upwardly mobile children report higher life satisfaction than those with non-mobile children. The effect is strongest among lower-educated parents and increases with each additional upwardly mobile child. While emotional closeness and support matter for well-being overall, they do not fully explain this link. Educational mobility thus emerges as a new category of social inequality in later life, where children’s educational capital shapes not only their own prospects but also their parents’ quality of life.
The paper is available here (open access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11577-025-01021-0