A Stairway to the Top? The Relationship Between Economic and Educational Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Mexico

This paper investigates the relationship between educational and economic positional intergenerational mobility in a developing country. Our findings suggest that individuals with upward educational positional mobility rank approximately two deciles higher in economic resources than those without such mobility, while those with downward mobility rank about one decile below those who do not experience educational positional mobility. For individuals starting at the bottom quintile of the economic distribution, experiencing upward educational positional mobility translates into a 15 pp lower probability of remaining there in adulthood than the reference group. In comparison, those who experience downward mobility have a 12 pp higher probability of remaining in the same quintile than the positionally immobile. The reverse pattern occurs in those who start at the top quintile. We find suggestive evidence that the link between positional educational and economic mobility is the changes in occupational status, as those who experience upward educational mobility are more likely to climb in the occupational status scale and when they do, they are also more likely to experience upward economic mobility than the rest of the population, even when they experience upward occupational mobility.