Abstract: We estimate the evolution of intergenerational mobility of education in Chile for synthetic cohorts born between 1930 and 1978. The correlation coefficient between children and parent education falls from 0.67 for the cohort born in 1930 to 0.41 for that born in 1956, a process of improvement that suddenly stops, followed by stagnation. We find that the stagnation is explained by the effect on tertiary education coverage of low incomes when the children were born (long-run credit constraints) and the restrictions to the supply side of tertiary education (that had a particularly strong effect on children from less educated parents) during the late seventies and early eighties.