Skin tone differences in social mobility in mexico: are we forgetting regional variance?

Luis Monroy-Gómez-Franco and Roberto Velez-Grajales
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Roberto Velez-Grajales: Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Roberto Velez Grajales

No 525, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: Recent analysis at the national scale have concluded that there is a strong relationship between skin tones and social mobility in Mexico, where darker skin tones are associated with lower rates of relative upward intergenerational mobility than those observed for lighter skin tones. The present paper shows that this previous estimates are biased upwards as they fail to take into account the effects of regional differences in the distribution of skin tones. We correct for this factor by analyzing a new data set representative at the regional level. Our results suggest that although qualitatively the gap in mobility rates persist, the size of the gaps are smaller than previously reported and vary substantially across Mexican regions. In particular, we find that individuals with light skin tones face higher upward mobility rates and lower downward mobility rates than the rest of the Mexican population.

Keywords: Skin tone; Social Mobility; Regions; Mexico. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J1 J6 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Skin Tone Differences in Social Mobility in Mexico: Are We Forgetting Regional Variance? (2021)
Working Paper: Skin Tone Differences in Social Mobility in Mexico: Are We Forgetting Regional Variance? (2020)
Working Paper: Skin Tone Differences in Social Mobility in Mexico: Are We Forgetting Regional Variance? (2020)
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