In what homes did Swedish CEOs grow up?

Sammanfattning: Sweden is often described as a country where intergenerational social mobility is high. It has also been found that social mobility decreases when we study the top of the income distribution. I study the occupational mobility for an elite group in society, namely the CEOs from large and prominent Swedish companies. I collect a new data set which contains 172 former and current CEOs born in the period 1900--1969, together with information on their fathers' occupations. I find that members of social group I are overrepresented by a factor of more than 11 and that members of social group II and III are underrepresented. I further find that more than half of the CEOs had a father in a managerial position but due to lack of data, I cannot measure the representativeness to society as a whole. CEOs with noble surnames are overrepresented by factor 10. While the Swedish income mobility increased during the period 1930--1950, my results show that this is not in case for the occupational mobility for the elite as I do not find any significant change in social group association over time.