Intergenerational educational mobility – the degree to which children's educational outcomes are (in)dependent from their parents' education – has become central to global policy discussions on equality and opportunity. A new study led by Dr Mobarak Hossain, Associate Member at DSPI and Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Martina Beretta, DPhil student at DSPI, brings clarity to this issue by identifying significant global trends.
Drawing on more than 53.7 million individual observations from across 92 countries, the research, ‘Intergenerational Educational Mobility During the Twentieth Century’, explores patterns of educational mobility across both high-income countries (HICs) and in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This involved analysing data on 107,355,504 individuals from 15 HICs and 77 LMICs.
Key findings
The research has identified a number of trends in intergenerational educational mobility around the world:
- Educational mobility has increased over time in most countries, with post-Soviet states as exceptions.
- HICs continue to have higher levels of educational mobility, but notable gains have occurred in many LMICs.
- In LMICs, the increase in educational mobility has been more pronounced among daughters, narrowing the gender mobility gap in many LMICs.
- Daughters in HICs have become increasingly mobile in recent decades, while sons’ mobility has remained stable or declined. As a result, daughters are now more mobile than sons in many HICs.
- The study finds a strong association between education expansion and educational mobility, especially for daughters relative to their mothers’ education.
Dr Hossain commented: “Our results highlight how institutional features such as compulsory schooling laws, welfare regimes, and labour markets can affect educational mobility. All these elements are often more developed in high-income countries, possibly amplifying the influence of educational expansion on mobility, and therefore should be considered as part of policy development.”
Martina Beretta added: “The differences in educational mobility across LMICs suggest that simply expanding education in this region may not be sufficient to improve mobility unless deeper structural inequalities are also tackled.”
Significance of the research
These findings offer insight into how educational mobility relates to broader structures such as educational expansion and economic development. As societies undergo technological and economic advancements, education becomes a key credential in merit-based employment systems.
As a result, widening access to education – particularly at the secondary and tertiary levels especially in LMICs – may play a crucial role in reducing the extent to which children’s educational opportunities depend on their parents’ education.
Read the full study on the Wiley Online Library website
