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Growing Up Together : Sibling Correlation, Parental Influence, and IntergenerationalEducational Mobility in Developing Countries

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  • Ahsan,Md. Nazmul
  • Emran,M. Shahe
  • Jiang,Hanchen
  • Han,Qingyang
  • Shilpi,Forhad J.

Abstract

This paper presents credible and comparable evidence on intergenerational educationalmobility in 53 developing countries using sibling correlation as a measure, and data from 230 waves ofDemographic and Health Surveys. It is the first paper to provide estimates of sibling correlation in schooling for alarge number of developing countries using high quality standardized data. Sibling correlation is an omnibus measureof mobility as it captures observed and unobserved family and neighborhood factors shared by siblings when growing uptogether. The estimates suggest that sibling correlation in schooling in developing countries is much higher (average0.59) than that in developed countries (average 0.41). There is substantial spatial heterogeneity across regions, withLatin America and Caribbean having the highest (0.65) and Europe and Central Asia the lowest (0.48) estimates. Countrylevel heterogeneity within a region is more pronounced. The evolution of sibling correlation suggests a variety ofmobility experiences, with some regions registering a monotonically declining trend from the 1970s birth cohort tothe 1990s birth cohort (Latin America and the Caribbean and East Asia and Pacific), while others remained trapped instagnancy (South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa). The only region that experienced monotonically increasing siblingcorrelation is the Middle East and North Africa. The recent approach of Bingley and Cappellari (2019) is used toestimate the share of sibling correlation due to intergenerational transmission. The estimates show that whenthe homogeneity and independence assumptions implicit in the standard model of intergenerational transmission arerelaxed, the estimated share is much larger. In the sample of countries, on average 74 percent of sibling correlationcan be attributed to intergenerational transmission, while there are some countries where the share is more than 80percent (most in Sub-Saharan Africa). This suggests a dominant role for parents in determining the educationalopportunities of their children. Evidence on the evolution of the intergenerational share, however, suggests adeclining importance of the intergenerational transmission component in many countries, but the pattern is diverse. Insome cases, the trend in the intergenerational share is opposite to the trend in sibling correlation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahsan,Md. Nazmul & Emran,M. Shahe & Jiang,Hanchen & Han,Qingyang & Shilpi,Forhad J., 2023. "Growing Up Together : Sibling Correlation, Parental Influence, and IntergenerationalEducational Mobility in Developing Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10285, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10285
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General
    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

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