Intergenerational educational mobility during the twentieth century

Intergenerational educational mobility during the twentieth century in 77 low- and middle-income and 15 high-income countries

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series
Hosted by the Department of Social Policy on 14 March 2024

Presenter: Dr Mobarak Hossain(Department of Social Policy LSE)
Chair: Dr Thomas Biegert (Department of Social Policy LSE)

Abstract: Inequalities in educational attainment based on social origins exhibited a non-persistent decline during parts of the twentieth century in many post-industrial societies. However, little is known about this pattern in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This project addresses this puzzle with three main objectives. First, we investigate the trend in intergenerational educational mobility across 77 LMICs and 15 high-income countries (HICs) spanning six consecutive birth cohorts from the 1930s to the 2000s. Intergenerational mobility refers to the extent to which children’s educational attainment is unrelated to that of their parents. Second, we unpack the pattern of intergenerational mobility in two ways: (1) examining gender differences in mobility; and (2) exploring how macro factors such as the expansion of education and the level of GDP per capita predict this pattern. Third, the data for this study include national censuses from IPUMS International for all but one country, involving about 100 million individuals (parents and their corresponding children). We demonstrate various approaches to addressing co-resident bias (caused by parents’ living situation with children) in the census data and show that it does not significantly affect the results.