Biblioteca

Abstract: This paper is one of the first to document multigenerational educationalmobility for a Latin American country. It complements a recent wave of articles thatstudy mobility beyond two generations in developed countries. Specifically, we link dataon educational attainment for three generations in Chile. Our main findings indicate thatgrandparental education influences grandchildren’s schooling even after taking theparental factor into account. Accordingly, standard two-generation estimations over-predict intergenerational mobility over three generations. We investigate three potentialavenues of transmission. First, we find that upward schooling mobility has moderatelyincreased with younger cohorts, and that such changes may be attributable toinstitutional reforms. Second, there is important heterogeneity in educational mobilityacross regions in Chile, which sheds light on how parents’ place of origin matters forupward mobility. Third, a gender-specific lineage analysis indicates that having moreeducated same-sex ancestors matters more for women and suggests that gender-relatedsocial roles may be passed along generations within families. All in all, our resultssuggest that family background effects can be longer lasting than previously believed,affecting the endowments and idiosyncratic capabilities of children.

KEYWORDS : Intergenerational mobility, Schooling, Multiple generations, Latin America