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Using individual data from over 400 surveys, this paper compiles a global database of intergenerational mobility in education for 153 countries covering 97 percent of the world's population. For 87 percent of the world's population, it provides trends in intergenerational mobility for individuals born between 1950 to 1989. The findings show that absolute mobility in education-the share of respondents that obtains higher levels of education than their parents-is higher in the developed world despite the higher levels of parental educational attainment. Relative mobility-measuring the degree of independence between parent and child years of schooling-is also found to be greater in the developed world. Together, these findings point to severe challenges in intergenerational mobility in the poorest parts of the world. Beyond national income levels, the paper explores the correlation between intergenerational mobility and a variety of country characteristics. Countries with higher rates of mobility have (i) higher tax revenues and rates of government expenditures, especially on education; (ii) better child health indicators (less stunting and lower infant mortality); (iii) higher school quality (more teachers per pupil and fewer school dropouts); and (iv) less residential segregation.

Economics of Education --- Education --- Education Finance --- Gender --- Gender and Development --- Inequality --- Intergenerational Mobility --- Poverty Reduction

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This paper discusses equality of opportunity in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, with an emphasis on access to labor market opportunities. It develops an inequality of opportunity index on access to good jobs and decomposes the contributing factors in the prevailing inequality. Then, it discusses the extent to which inequality in accessing human capital inputs among individuals during the early formative years may affect access to good jobs. The main takeaways are as follows. First, connections play an important role in obtaining access to good jobs in the South Caucasus, highlighting the unfairness in processes in the sub-region's labor markets. Second, access to good jobs-defined as work for 20 hours or more a week and work under contract or with tenure-is low in the South Caucasus in comparison with other parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Third, even among people who have access to these jobs, the share of the total inequality of opportunity that may be characterized as unfair is relatively high. Armenia and Azerbaijan stand out for the significant share of inequality in access to good jobs associated with gender differences. Fourth, the analysis on access to education and basic human capital inputs in the earlier, formative stages of life shows that learning performance in the South Caucasus tends to be poor and unequal across the life circumstances of children. Nonetheless, the coverage rates of basic human capital inputs are generally high; the relatively narrow inequalities arise mostly from spatial disparities. These results indicate that addressing the deep structural inequalities shaping the landscape of opportunity in the South Caucasus must be a key consideration in any strategy to share prosperity sustainably.

Education --- Employment --- Equality Of Opportunity --- Intergenerational Mobility --- Labor Markets --- Poverty Reduction --- Social Protections and Labor

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This paper extends the Becker-Tomes model of intergenerational educational mobility to a rural economy characterized by farm-nonfarm occupational dualism and provides a comparative analysis of rural China and rural India. The model builds a micro-foundation for the widely used linear-in-levels estimating equation. Returns to education for parents and productivity of financial investment in children's education determine relative mobility, as measured by the slope, while the intercept depends, among other factors, on the degree of persistence in nonfarm occupations. Unlike many existing studies based on coresident samples, our estimates of intergenerational mobiity do not suffer from truncation bias. The sons in rural India faced lower educational mobility compared with the sons in rural China in the 1970s to 1990s. To understand the role of genetic inheritance, Altonji and others (2005) sensitivity analysis is combined with the evidence on intergenerational correlation in cognitive ability in economics and behavioral genetics literature. The observed persistence can be due solely to genetic correlations in China, but not in India. Fathers' nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining a sons' schooling in India, but separable in China. There is evidence of emerging complementarity for the younger cohorts in rural China. Structural change in favor of the nonfarm sector contributed to educational inequality in rural India. Evidence from supplementary data on economic mechanisms suggests that the model provides plausible explanations for the contrasting roles of occupational dualism in intergenerational educational mobility in rural India and rural China.

Coresidency Bias --- Economics of Education --- Education --- Educational Mobility --- Farm-Nonfarm Complementarity --- Intergenerational Mobility --- Labor Market --- Occupational Dualism --- Rural Development --- Rural Economy --- Rural Education --- Rural Labor Markets

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Biases from truncation caused by coresidency restriction have been a challenge for research on intergenerational mobility. Estimates of intergenerational schooling persistence from two data sets show that the intergenerational regression coefficient, the most widely used measure, is severely biased downward in coresident samples. But the bias in intergenerational correlation is much smaller, and is less sensitive to the coresidency rate. The paper provides explanations for these results. Comparison of intergenerational mobility based on the intergenerational regression coefficient across countries, gender, and over time can be misleading. Much progress on intergenerational mobility in developing countries can be made with the available data by focusing on intergenerational correlation.

Coresidency. --- Developing Countries. --- Disability. --- Education. --- Educational Sciences. --- Intergenerational Correlation (IGC). --- Intergenerational Mobility. --- Intergenerational Regression Coefficient (IGRC). --- Primary Education. --- Science and Technology Development. --- Science Education. --- Scientific Research and Science Parks. --- Social Protections and Labor. --- Truncation Bias.

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This paper provides an analysis of the rural-urban divide in intergenerational educational mobility in Indonesia with two distinguishing features. First, the estimating equations are derived from theory incorporating rural-urban differences in returns to education and school quality, and possible complementarity between parent's education and financial investment. Second, the data are suitable for tackling the biases from sample truncation due to coresidency and omitted cognitive ability heterogeneity. The evidence rejects the workhorse linear intergenerational educational persistence equation in favor of a convex relation in rural and urban Indonesia. The rural-urban relative mobility curves cross, with the children of low educated fathers enjoying higher relative mobility in rural areas, while the pattern flips in favor of the urban children when the father has more than nine years of schooling. However, the rural children face lower absolute mobility across the whole distribution of father's schooling. Estimates from the investment equation suggest that, in urban areas, children's peers are complementary to financial investment by parents, while the adult role models are substitutes. In contrast, separability holds in villages. Peers and role models are not responsible for the convexity in both rural and urban areas, suggesting more efficient investment by educated parents as a likely mechanism, as proposed by Becker and others (2015, 2018). The theoretical relation between the intercepts of the mobility and investment equations helps in understand whether school quality is complementary to or a substitute for parental financial investment. This paper finds evidence of substitutability, implying that public investment to improve the quality of rural schools is desirable on both equity and efficiency grounds.

Complementarity --- Economics of Education --- Intergenerational Mobility --- Labor Markets --- Returns To Education --- Role Model --- Rural Development --- Rural Labor Markets --- Rural Urban Linkages --- Rural-Urban Divide --- School Quality --- Social Protections and Labor --- Urban Development --- Urbanization