Nina Smith

Using rich administrative and longitudinal survey data for Denmark, we investigate sibling correlations in educational outcomes, which serve as a broad measure of the importance of family and community background. We find sibling correlations of up to 0.38, suggesting that more than a third of the variation in educational achievement can be explained by family background. Our results further reveal that parents’ socio‐economic background can account for a large part of the sibling correlation. Other family characteristics such as family structure, social problems and parents’ educational preferences only contribute to explaining sibling similarities at lower levels of the educational distribution.

The authors estimate the probability of promotion into VP and CEO positions using employer-employee data from all Danish companies observed during the period 1997 to 2007. After controlling for a large number of firm and family-related variables, including take-up history of maternity and paternity leave and proxies for female-friendly companies, a considerable gap still occurs in the promotion probabilities for CEO positions. Part of the gap is due to gender differences in the area of specialization as top executive. Women tend to cluster in VP positions in HR, R&D, and IT areas in which the chances of a CEO promotion are lower than for positions as CFOs and VPs in Sales or Production areas.