Educational Mobility Across Three Generations in Latin American Countries

Pablo Celhay and Sebastian Gallegos

No 2023-013, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on educational mobility across three generations in six Latin American countries (LAC). Combining survey information with national census data we build a data set with 50,000 triads of grandparents-parent-children born between 1890 and 1990. We estimate a five mobility measures, to show that (i) the empirical multi-generational persistence is high in LAC; (ii) it is much larger than what Becker & Tomes (1986) theoretical model predicts, with a bias that is twice as large for LAC compared to developed countries; (iii) Clark’s theory (2014) of high and sticky persistence provides a better approximation for describing mobility across multiple generations in developing countries. We also uncover that while relative measures suggest stagnant mobility across generations, there are significant improvements according to non-linear measures suggested by Asher, Novosad & Rafkin (2022). This result is especially relevant for developing countries such as LAC, where historical educational expansions have especially benefited the lower end of the schooling distribution.

Keywords: developing countries; Latin America; intergenerational mobility; educational policy; multiple generations; compulsory schooling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I28 J12 J62 N36 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-his, nep-lam and nep-ltv
Note: MIP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Celhay ... ty-3-generations.pdf First version, June 13, 2023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Educational Mobility Across Three Generations in Latin American Countries (2023)
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