Educational inequality and intergenerational mobility in Latin America: A new database

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Neidhoefer, Guido; Serrano, Joaquin; Gasparini, Leonardo
• 署名单位: Leibniz Association; DIW Berlin - Deutsches Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung; Free University of Berlin; National University of La Plata; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2018.05.016
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 329-349
• 关键词: inequality; intergenerational mobility; Equality of opportunity; education; Latin America

摘要

The causes and consequences of the intergenerational persistence of inequality are a topic of great interest among various fields in economics. However, until now, issues of data availability have restricted a broader and cross national perspective on the topic. Based on rich sets of harmonized household survey data, we contribute to filling this gap by computing time series for several indexes of relative and absolute intergenerational education mobility for 18 Latin American countries over 50 years and making them publicly available. We find that inter-generational mobility is, on average, rising in Latin America. This pattern seems to be driven by the high upward mobility of children from low-educated families; at the same time, there is substantial immobility at the top of the distribution. Significant cross-country differences are observed and are associated with income inequality, poverty, economic growth, public educational expenditures, and assortative mating.