Educational Mobility Across Three Generations in Latin American Countries

In this working paper, Pablo Celhay and Sebastian Gallegos present 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. They estimate 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. They 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.

 

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