IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v48y2012i9p1193-1208.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in Rural Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • M. Niaz Asadullah

Abstract

Unique residential history data with retrospective information on parental assets are used to study household wealth mobility in 141 villages in rural Bangladesh. Regression estimates of father--son correlations and analyses of intergenerational transition matrices show substantial persistence in wealth even when we correct for measurement errors in parental wealth. We do not find wealth mobility to be higher between periods of a person's life than between generations. We find that the process of household division plays an important role: sons who splinter off from the father's household experience greater (albeit downward) mobility in wealth. Despite significant occupational mobility across generations, its contribution to wealth mobility, net of human capital attainment of individuals, appears insignificant. Low wealth mobility in our data is primarily explained by intergenerational persistence in educational attainment.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Niaz Asadullah, 2012. "Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in Rural Bangladesh," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(9), pages 1193-1208, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:48:y:2012:i:9:p:1193-1208
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2011.646988
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2011.646988
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duncan Thomas & Elizabeth Frankenberg & James P. Smith, 2001. "Lost but Not Forgotten: Attrition and Follow-up in the Indonesia Family Life Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(3), pages 556-592.
    2. Fran??ois Bourguignon & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Marta Men??ndez, 2003. "Inequality of Outcomes and Inequality of Opportunities in Brazil," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 2003-630, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    3. Fuwa, Nobuhiko, 1999. "An Analysis of Social Mobility in a Village Community: The Case of a Philippine Village," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 101-138, January.
    4. Nathan D. Grawe & Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "Economic Interpretations of Intergenerational Correlations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 45-58, Summer.
    5. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst, 2003. "The Correlation of Wealth across Generations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(6), pages 1155-1182, December.
    6. Mohammad Niaz Asadullah, 2006. "Returns to Education in Bangladesh," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 453-468.
    7. Menchik, Paul L, 1979. "Inter-generational Transmission of Inequality: An Empirical Study of Wealth Mobility," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 46(184), pages 349-362, November.
    8. Gary Solon, 2002. "Cross-Country Differences in Intergenerational Earnings Mobility," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 59-66, Summer.
    9. Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2003. "Payoffs from Panels in Low-Income Countries: Economic Development and Economic Mobility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 112-117, May.
    10. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    11. Swaminathan, Madhura, 1991. "Measuring Mobility in Wealth: Some Estimates from a South Indian Village," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 53(2), pages 171-183, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francesco Pastore, 2016. "‘I Wish I Had 100 Dollars a Month …’ The Determinants of Poverty in Mongolia," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 28(5), pages 934-956, November.
    2. Asadullah, Mohammad Niaz & Chaudhury, Nazmul, 2012. "Subjective well-being and relative poverty in rural Bangladesh," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 940-950.
    3. Andrew Foster & Sveta Milusheva, 2015. "Household Recombination, Retrospective Evaluation, and the Effects of a Health and Family Planning Intervention," Working Papers id:7183, eSocialSciences.
    4. Emran,M. Shahe & Sun,Yan - GSP05, 2015. "Are the children of uneducated farmers doubly disadvantaged ? farm, nonfarm and intergenerational educational mobility in rural China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7459, The World Bank.
    5. Dang, Thang, 2015. "Intergenerational mobility of earnings and income among sons and daughters in Vietnam," MPRA Paper 75357, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Emran, M. Shahe & Greene, William H & Shilpi, Forhad, 2015. "When measure matters: coresident sample selection bias in estimating intergenerational mobility in developing countries," MPRA Paper 65920, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Emran, M. Shahe & Sun, Yan, 2014. "Are the Children of Uneducated Farmers Doubly Doomed? Farm, Nonfarm and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural China," MPRA Paper 59230, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Bevis, Leah E.M. & Barrett, Christopher B., 2015. "Decomposing Intergenerational Income Elasticity: The Gender-differentiated Contribution of Capital Transmission in Rural Philippines," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 233-252.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:48:y:2012:i:9:p:1193-1208. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Chris Longhurst). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.