Persistence in the Transmission of Education: Evidence across Three Generations for Chile

Pablo Celhay and Sebastian Gallegos

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 2015, vol. 16, issue 3, 420-451

Abstract: This paper is one of the first to document multigenerational educational mobility for a Latin American country. It complements a recent wave of articles that study mobility beyond two generations in developed countries. Specifically, we link data on educational attainment for three generations in Chile. Our main findings indicate that grandparental education influences grandchildren's schooling even after taking the parental factor into account. Accordingly, standard two-generation estimations over-predict intergenerational mobility over three generations. We investigate three potential avenues of transmission. First, we find that upward schooling mobility has moderately increased with younger cohorts, and that such changes may be attributable to institutional reforms. Second, there is important heterogeneity in educational mobility across regions in Chile, which sheds light on how parents' place of origin matters for upward mobility. Third, a gender-specific lineage analysis indicates that having more educated same-sex ancestors matters more for women and suggests that gender-related social roles may be passed along generations within families. All in all, our results suggest that family background effects can be longer lasting than previously believed, affecting the endowments and idiosyncratic capabilities of children.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19452829.2015.1048789 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jhudca:v:16:y:2015:i:3:p:420-451

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJHD20

DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2015.1048789

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities is currently edited by Kathryn Rosenblum

More articles in Journal of Human Development and Capabilities from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().