Economic Mobility in Latin America: Beyond Education, Stagnant Intergenerational Persistence of Socio-Economic Status

This paper provides an updated and expanded view of intergenerational mobility in Latin America by moving beyond the traditional focus on educational outcomes. Using harmonized data for 18 countries over the last five decades, we first update standard measures of educational mobility and confirm a sustained improvement for recent cohorts. However, a central contribution of this paper is to examine broader dimensions of economic mobility—such as job stability, housing conditions, asset ownership, and perceived socio-economic status—through a composite well-being index. Contrary to the optimistic picture suggested by rising educational mobility, our results show that mobility in economic well-being has remained largely stagnant across cohorts. We document a widening disconnect between education and overall socio-economic progress: while access to schooling has expanded and intergenerational persistence in education has declined, the influence of parental background on individuals’ economic well-being has not diminished—and has even increased for younger generations.