Intergenerational mobility in Latin America: the multiple facets of social status and the role of mothers

Abstract

We assess intergenerational mobility in terms of education and income rank in five Latin American countries—Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama—by accounting for the education and occupation of both parents. We find that intergenerational persistence estimates increase by 26% to 50% when parents’ occupations are considered alongside their education to proxy family socioeconomic background. The increase is particularly strong when education is more evenly distributed in the parents’ generation. Furthermore, we assess how the informativeness of each proxyfor parental background evolves across countries and over time, and find that maternal characteristics have become increasingly informative in recent decades, in line with rising women’s educational attainment and labor force participation. We also observe interesting heterogeneities across countries and cohorts.