Working Paper
Dynastic measures of inter-generational mobility with empirical evidence from Indonesia
We suggest a simple and flexible criterion to assess inter-generational mobility. It accommodates different types of outcomes (continuous outcomes such as potential earnings, or discrete ones such as education groups) and captures dynastic...
Working Paper
Intergenerational mobility in occupational choices
Historically, the issue of intergenerational evolution of income, wealth, and socioeconomic status has been the subject of considerable research in the analysis of inequality. Such intergenerational linkages are anticipated to come from two sources...
Working Paper
Multigenerational mobility in India
Most studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—that is, status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational...
Policy Brief
Inequality in India on the rise
Following the introduction of economic reforms in the early 1990s, India today is achieving unprecedented per capita growth rates. Poverty reduction has also accelerated and is justly celebrated. There is great concern, however, that this growth is...
Working Paper
Inequality and the generational economy
Differences in the economic lifecycle between countries at different levels of development suggest that there may be differences between sub-populations within countries, particularly where the sub-populations have different levels of income. Given...
Working Paper
Intergenerational mobility, human capital accumulation, and growth in India
Productivity and socio-economic progress are inter-connected. Economic growth funds policies that promote socio-economic progress, while the latter serves as a growth engine. A society with high mobility is one where individual achievements are...
Working Paper
Inequality trends and dynamics in India
India today is achieving per capita growth rates that are historically unprecedented. Poverty reduction has also accelerated. There is concern, however, that this growth is being accompanied by rising inequality. We report on a research project that...
Working Paper
Returns to education, intergenerational mobility, and inequality trends in Brazil
Education-related changes are often argued as the main reasons for changes in earnings distribution. However, omitted variable and measurement error biases possibly affect econometric estimates of these effects. Brazil experienced a sharp fall of...
Working Paper
Smoothing or strengthening the ‘Great Gatsby curve’?
We examine the heterogeneous and dynamic impact of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme on intergenerational wealth dependence using a nationally representative longitudinal household survey covering the period 2011–13. We adopt an instrumental quantile...
Working Paper
Colonial origin, ethnicity, and intergeneration mobility in Africa
This paper estimates the relationship between differences in skills measured among within-country ethnic groups and individual human capital accumulation in eight African countries. Our results show that the skills of an individual in these countries...
Working Paper
Intergenerational mobility of education in Vietnam
Vietnam’s education system has recently attracted international attention for exceptional learning outcomes and success in improving schooling outcomes over a short period, despite being a lower-middle-income country. One potential explanation is the...
Research Brief
Racial inequality and demographic change in South Africa
Over the past 20 years, researchers have been looking at the economic lifecycle of individuals around the world using National Transfer Accounts (NTA) data. The focus of this research has been on understanding how societies produce, consume, share...
Working Paper
Regional inequality of economic outcomes and opportunities in Ethiopia
This paper provides an informative picture of the extent of regional inequality of economic outcomes and opportunities in the pre-and post-reform Ethiopia. We start by presenting evidence that regional inequality in educational attainment, formal...
Working Paper
Measuring social mobility rates in earlier and less-documented societies
In societies where surnames are inherited from parents, we can use these names to estimate rates of intergenerational mobility. This paper explains how to make such estimates, and illustrates their use in pre-industrial England and modern Chile and...
Working Paper
Is there a gender bias in intergenerational mobility?
We examine the intergenerational mobility of women relative to men, using paired mother-daughter and father-son data on occupation and education for Cameroon. We find that both in occupation and education, intergenerational mobility is higher for...
Working Paper
China and the United States
The United States and China are the world’s largest economies. Together they are responsible for about one-third of the world’s economic output. This paper aims to examine whether the two economic giants are also lands of opportunity where resources...
Working Paper
Drivers of mobility
Empirical studies in developing countries tend to find higher levels of socioeconomic persistence across generations compared with those of high-income economies. However, there have been relatively few advances in the identification of the drivers...
Working Paper
Income mobility in the developing world
This paper examines income mobility in developing countries. We start by synthesizing findings from the available evidence on relative mobility and poverty dynamics. We then describe evidence on economic mobility obtained via synthetic panels...
Working Paper
Social mobility and inequality between groups
The relationship between social mobility and inequality is well studied in the literature, but far greater attention has been paid to ‘vertical’ than to ‘horizontal’ inequality. This paper focuses on mobility and horizontal inequality between ethnic...
Working Paper
Can ‘good’ social mobility news be ‘bad’ and vice versa?
Limited attention has been paid to how well social mobility measures debated and used to study industrial countries perform in analysis of low-income settings. Following brief, selective reviews of the axiomatic and econometric literatures, three...
Working Paper
Whose intergenerational mobility?
Various scholars have estimated levels of intergenerational mobility in OECD countries. Fewer estimates are available for developing countries, where mobility arguably matters more due to starker differences in living standards. This paper presents...
Working Paper
Foreign aid and intergenerational mobility in Africa
While there is extensive literature examining the growth and development effects of foreign aid, very little attention has been paid to its potential impact on social mobility. Thus, this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of...
Journal Article
Multigenerational mobility among males in India
Most studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational mobility...
Working Paper
Inequality of opportunity and intergenerational persistence in Latin America
How strong is the transmission of socio-economic status across generations in Latin America? To answer this question, we first review the empirical literature on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity for the region, summarizing...