Who Reaches the Middle Class in Mexico? Social Mobility and Territorial Inequality Beyond the Rural-Urban Divide

This paper studies intergenerational mobility into the middle class in Mexico, emphasizing the role of territorial origin alongside family background. Using the ESRU-EMOVI 2023 survey and an income-based definition of economic classes consistent with recent thresholds for Latin America, we analyse both access to the middle class and to the top incomes. Parental circumstances are captured through a multidimensional class approach: first, using variables on assets, education, occupation, and social protection; then, using a cluster-based classification that combines these variables. Moving beyond the standard rural-urban dichotomy that dominates much of the existing literature, we adopt a more granular territorial perspective. It simultaneously accounts for the size of the locality where individuals lived at age 14 and the population size of the main urban core that anchors their functional territory. This method allows us to capture spatial gradients in opportunity that remain invisible in conventional classifications. Our main finding is that mobility prospects do not follow a simple urban-size hierarchy: individuals raised in urban localities within large-core territories (350,000-1 million) consistently exhibit the highest probabilities of upward mobility, exceeding those observed in large metropolitan areas. Census-based evidence suggests that this advantage reflects higher levels of formal employment, social protection, and economic diversification in these territories, highlighting the central role of intermediate cities in inclusive mobility dynamics.