Publication: The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean
Loading...
Published
2022-05-06
ISSN
Date
2022-05-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper estimates intergenerational mobility in education using data from 91 censuses that span 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean over half a century. It measures upward mobility as the likelihood of obtaining at least a primary education for individuals whose parents did not finish primary school, whereas downward mobility is the likelihood of failing to complete primary education for individuals whose parents completed at least primary school. In addition, the paper explores the geography of educational intergenerational mobility using nearly 400 “provinces” and more than 6,000 “districts”. It documents wide cross-country and within-country heterogeneity. The paper documents a declining trend in the mobility gap between urban and rural populations, and small differences by gender. Within countries, the level of mobility is highly correlated with the share of primary completion of the previous generation, which suggests a high level of inertia. In addition, upward (downward) mobility is negatively (positively) correlated with distance to the capital and the share of employment in agriculture, but positively (negatively) correlated with the share of employment in industry.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Munoz Saavedra, Ercio Andres. 2022. The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37414 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Climate and Social Sustainability in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Contexts(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence political participation, trust, or migration. This paper helps fill that gap by examining links between climate change, conflict, and social sustainability, with a focus on inclusion, resilience, cohesion, and legitimacy. Using secondary data from 2019–24, the study applies simple correlation-based methods to test three hypotheses on the nature, severity, and composition of these associations. The analysis combines multiple climate impact measures, new conflict classifications, recent social sustainability frameworks, and controls for population and geography. The results reveal strong correlations—not causation—between climate events and contexts of fragility, conflict, and violence. Climate impacts are most pronounced in both national and subnational conflict settings. The study also finds robust links between fragility, conflict, and violence and low levels of social sustainability, reflecting its role as both a driver and consequence of conflict. Some dimensions—such as violent events and insecurity—appear weaker in areas most affected by climate shocks. Two of the hypotheses are supported, and one remains inconclusive.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication Investment in Emerging and Developing Economies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)The world faces a pressing challenge to meet key development objectives amid slowing growth and rising macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. With the number of job seekers rising rapidly, infrastructure shortfalls continuing to be large, and climate costs mounting, the case for a significant investment push has never been stronger. Yet the capacity to respond in many emerging markets and developing economies has eroded. Since the global financial crisis, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s, with both public and private investment weakening. Foreign direct investment inflows—a critical source of capital, technology, and managerial know-how—have also fallen sharply and become increasingly concentrated, leaving low-income countries with only a marginal share. The risks of further retrenchment are significant, as trade tensions, policy uncertainty, and elevated debt levels continue to weigh on investment. Reigniting momentum will require ambitious domestic reforms to strengthen institutions, rebuild macro-fiscal stability, and deepen trade and investment integration—the foundations of a supportive business climate. At the same time, international cooperation is indispensable. A renewed commitment to a predictable system of cross-border trade and investment flows, combined with scaled-up financial support and sustained technical assistance, is essential to help emerging markets and developing economies—especially low-income countries and economies in fragile and conflict situations—bridge financing gaps and implement the domestic reforms needed to restore investment as an engine of growth, jobs, and development.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Does It Matter Where You Grow Up? Childhood Exposure Effects in Latin America and the Caribbean(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-06)This paper studies whether the observed differences in intergenerational educational mobility across regions in Latin America and the Caribbean are due to the sorting of families or the effect of growing up in these different places. The analysis exploits differences in the ages of children at the time their families moved across locations, to isolate regional childhood exposure effects from sorting. The findings show a convergence rate of 3.5 percent per year of exposure between age 1 to 11, implying that children who moved at age of 1 would pick up 35 percent of the observed differences in mobility between origin and destination. These results are robust to using a specification that identifies the effect of place within households, the use of only anomalously high migration outflows, instrumenting the choice of destination with historical migration, and a combination of both approaches.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009)Over the past decade, faster growth and smarter social policy have reversed the trend in Latin America's poverty. Too slowly and insufficiently, but undeniably, the percentage of Latinos who are poor has at long last begun to fall. This has shifted the political and policy debates from poverty toward inequality, something to be expected in a region that exhibits the world's most regressive distribution of development outcomes such as income, land ownership, and educational achievement. This book is a breakthrough in the measurement of human opportunity. It builds sophisticated formulas to answer a rather simple question: how much influence do personal circumstances have on the access that children get to the basic services that are necessary for a productive life? Needless to say, producing a methodology to measure human opportunity, and applying it across countries in one region, is just a first step. On the one hand, technical discussions and scientific vetting will continue, and refinements will surely follow. On the other, applying the new tool to a single country will allow for adjustments that make the findings much more useful to its policy realities. And fascinating comparative lessons could be learned by measuring human opportunity in developed countries across, say, the states of the United States or the nations of Europe. But the main message this book delivers remains a powerful one: it is possible to make equity a central purpose, if not the very definition, of development. That is, perhaps, it's most important contribution.Publication Teenage Pregnancy and Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean : On Teenage Fertility Decisions, Poverty and Economic Achievement(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012)The pregnancy project sought to expose the existence, and challenge the validity, of stereotypes about Hispanic women. The charade explored the underlying motivations of the many who responded with a wide range of reactions. The specific objectives of this regional study are: to establish a thorough description of the magnitude of the issue and its potential implications for social advancement; to advance the understanding of the risk factors, motivations and impacts at the household level-as a determinant of poverty and a cause of intra-and intergenerational poverty traps; to illuminate the coping mechanisms and their individual and social implications; to highlight the gender-related issues that have historically provoked asymmetric costs to boys and girls; and to provide elements that support specific policies on this matter. In the last decade, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have been moving in the right direction and the region has experienced important gains in gender equality of endowments (assets) and economic opportunities. In most LAC countries, girls have been achieving gender parity in primary school enrollment and even outperforming boys at the secondary and tertiary level. The present report reviews the factors associated with teenage pregnancy and early childbearing and builds a framework to explore these issues systematically, towards the design of effective policy interventions in LAC. Teen pregnancy and early childbearing remain a challenge in the region, particularly given the association of these phenomena with poverty and lack of opportunities, and the concern that it may prevent women from taking full advantage of their human development assets and opportunities. The main message of the report is that poverty and lack of opportunities are key factors associated to early childbearing.Publication Social Gains in the Balance : A Fiscal Policy Challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean(Washington, DC, 2014-02-24)In 2012, the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region continued its successful drive to reduce poverty and build the middle class. The proportion of the region's 600 million people living in extreme poverty, defined in the region as life on less than $2.50 a day, was cut in half between 2003 and 2012 to 12.3 percent. Reflecting the upward mobility out of poverty, households vulnerable to falling back into poverty became the largest group in LAC in 2005, and represent almost 38 percent of the population. However, in the last two years, the share of vulnerable households has started to decline. The middle class, currently 34.3 percent of the population, is growing rapidly and is projected to replace the vulnerable as the largest economic group in LAC by 2016. The Southern Cone region (including Brazil) continued to be the most dynamic region and the main driver of poverty reduction in LAC, while poverty in Central America and Mexico proved more stubborn. About 68 percent of poverty reduction between 2003 and 2012 was driven by economic growth, with the remaining 32 percent arising from decline in inequality. Overall, equality of access to basic childhood goods and services has improved in recent years. Yet access can be further improved, and serious issues remain concerning the quality of those goods and services, particularly in education and housing infrastructure. Moreover, access increases with parental education and income or assets, reflecting low intergenerational mobility in many countries in the region. As with poverty reduction, most of the progress in equality of access since 2000 has come in the Southern Cone and the Andean regions, while many of Central America's countries managed only small improvements. There are also severe differences at the subnational level and between urban and rural areas, highlighting the need to strengthen the capacity of local governments to deliver high quality basic services to all their citizens.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication The World Bank Group in Georgia, 2014-23(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-30)This Country Program Evaluation assesses the performance and effectiveness of the World Bank Group’s support to Georgia in achieving the country’s development objectives. In the decade leading up to the evaluation period, Georgia pursued economic reforms to attract critical investments for becoming a regional trade and transport hub. Ambitious economic reforms went hand in hand with efforts to improve human development and strengthening social protection systems. Growing geopolitical tensions and internal political polarization have challenged Georgia’s reform progress in recent years. The Bank Group’s strategy adapted well to Georgia’s development needs and was well coordinated with other development partners. It successfully employed a range of instruments to help increase competitiveness, growth, and job creation, and effectively contributed to improved infrastructure and increased trade by using programmatic and innovative approaches. The Bank Group’s regular investments in analytical work and the switch to results-based programmatic support helped improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education and health care systems. The IEG offers the following lessons based on the evidence and analysis in the Country Program Evaluation: (i) Prioritizing Bank Group support around the move towards deeper regional integration was an effective anchor for key economic reforms for economic convergence. (ii) Pursuing a selective and adaptive approach in a country with high implementation capacity and institutions, strong coordination among development partners, and access to a wide range of external resources can allow the Bank Group to exercise significant influence in areas of comparative advantage and global expertise. (iii) A stronger focus on outcome-based programmatic approaches helped to build local capacity and crowd-in partner financing.Publication Poland's New Golden Age : Shifting from Europe's Periphery to its Center(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10)The objective of the paper is (i) to help fill the gap in knowledge on the long-term economic history of Poland; (ii) to provide a new perspective to the debate on the economic future of Poland, with a special focus on its historically unprecedented post-transition growth experience; and (iii) to analyze critically long-term growth projections for Poland. The paper argues that (i) Poland has just had probably the best 20 years in its economic history, growing the fastest among all European economies and one of the fastest worldwide; (ii) by 2013, it Poland achieved levels of income, quality of life, and well-being likely never experienced before, including relative to Western Europe, a natural benchmark; and (iii) Poland is well placed to continue converging with the Western European levels of income, permanently moving from the economic periphery of Europe, where it languished for centuries, to the European economic center. The twenty-first century thus promises to become Poland's new Golden Age. The paper calls for further research on the lessons from Poland's successful growth model for other countries in the region and beyond as well as on the long-term implications of the rise of Poland for the future of Europe.Publication FY 2025 China Country Opinion Survey Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-04)The Country Opinion Survey in China assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in China perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in China on 1) their views regarding the general environment in China; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in China; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in China; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in China.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Cross-Border Banking in EMDEs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09)Cross-border banking in emerging markets and developing economies has expanded across most World Bank regions and has become large relative to some home and host economies. This paper analyzes recent trends of bank activities of financial groups headquartered in 46 emerging markets and developing economies, as well as the ownership structure of 51 prominent financial groups from emerging markets and developing economies. The data suggest that cross-border groups in most regions have grown in size, geographical reach, range of activities, and group complexity. The increasing relevance and complexity of cross-border banking pose challenges for policy makers in home and host jurisdictions as well as for the groups themselves to maximize the benefits of international financial integration while mitigating the risks. This balance calls for stronger consolidated supervision, more regional coordination and harmonization, and better group-wide corporate governance and controls. However, key challenges include institutional capacity constraints and political factors.