intergenerational mobility and inequality: the latin ... · america in the past decade. although...

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Intergenerational Mobilityand Inequality: The LatinAmerican CaseFlorencia TorcheDepartment of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY 10012;email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2014. 40:30.1–30.24

The Annual Review of Sociology is online atsoc.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145521

Copyright c© 2014 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

Keywords

class mobility, income elasticity, economic inequality, comparativestratification

Abstract

Prompted by new data and a renewed concern about equality of oppor-tunity, the study of intergenerational mobility has flourished in LatinAmerica in the past decade. Although analysis is still restricted to ahandful of countries, one conclusion appears clear: Intergenerationalincome mobility is weaker in Latin America than in industrial countriesand is characterized by “persistence at the top,” a pattern consistentwith the high levels of economic concentration in the region. However,social class mobility in Latin America does not differ from that in theindustrialized world. This essay reviews two generations of mobility re-search since the 1960s, takes stock of current findings on economic andclass mobility in Latin America, examines the linkages between mobil-ity and macro-level factors, and engages a new literature on equality ofopportunity. I suggest that the comparative understanding of mobilityin Latin America can inform and inspire research in the industrializedworld.

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1. INTRODUCTION

Latin America and the Caribbean compose avast region, comprising 26 countries and ter-ritories, almost 600 million people, and enor-mous diversity in terms of levels of economicdevelopment, racial/ethnic makeup, and insti-tutional and cultural tradition. When consid-ered in comparative perspective, the most strik-ing characteristic of Latin America is its highsocioeconomic inequality. Latin America is themost unequal region of the world, and it hasbeen since at least the 1960s (de Ferranti et al.2004).

Researchers have long puzzled about therelationship between inequality and intergen-erational mobility. It is reasonable to expectthat wide socioeconomic disparities will resultin weaker mobility because the uneven dis-tribution of resources will benefit advantagedfamilies in the competition for socioeconomicsuccess. Much research finds a negative asso-ciation between inequality and mobility acrossindustrialized countries (Bjorklund & Jantti2009, Blanden 2013, Jantti 2006, Solon 2002).Others claim that high inequality can be offsetby mobility, tacitly assuming that these twodistributional phenomena can move in oppo-site directions (Friedman 1962, pp. 171–72).Given its wide disparities, Latin America offersa test case. If inequality shapes mobility, weshould find limited opportunity for mobility inthe region. More broadly, although mobilityanalysis has been largely restricted to a smallpool of mostly industrialized countries, incor-porating Latin American nations sheds lighton the association between macro-level factorsand mobility outcomes.

Empirical studies of intergenerational mo-bility emerged in the 1960s in Latin America.Research was restricted to a handful of coun-tries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, andMexico. This first generation of mobility re-search was led by sociologists and focused onoccupational mobility. Researchers used twoanalytical approaches: tabular analysis of broadoccupational categories and path analysis ofoccupational status, as formulated by Blau &

Duncan (1967). An important concern for re-searchers in the 1960s and 1970s was the in-fluence of rapid urbanization, industrialization,and internal migration on mobility patterns.Surprisingly, findings from this first generationof research depict a process of intergenerationalstratification very similar to that of the UnitedStates.

The study of mobility came to an abrupt haltduring the 1980s and 1990s in a context of aneconomic crisis, which redirected the attentionof social scientists to questions about inequal-ity, poverty, and household strategies (e.g., Solıs2007, pp. 36–37 and references therein). As theeconomic situation started to improve in themid-1990s, concerns about equality of oppor-tunity and the intergenerational transmissionof advantage have regained importance, givingrise to a second generation of mobility research.

The second generation of mobility researchadds economic studies of earnings and incomemobility to the sociological studies of occu-pational mobility of the first generation. Aswith the first generation, analytical approachesand methods are imported from the indus-trialized world. Sociologists adopted standardclass classifications that ensure internationalcomparability and log-linear models that dis-tinguish structural mobility from social fluid-ity. Economists adopted the analysis of inter-generational earnings elasticities/correlations.Mobility analysis remains, however, largely re-stricted to the same handful of countries in-cluded in the first generation. As in the indus-trialized world (Ganzeboom et al. 1991), thesecond generation of mobility research has fo-cused on the bivariate intergenerational associ-ation, with little examination of mechanisms.

This review proceeds as follows: Section 2describes the Latin American context with afocus on the wide socioeconomic disparitiesin the region. Section 3 discusses definitional,measurement, and data issues involved in theanalysis of intergenerational mobility in LatinAmerica. Section 4 is the core of this review.It discusses what we know about occupationaland economic mobility in Latin America, us-ing a comparative approach whenever possible.

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It also examines a small literature on the asso-ciation between mobility and macro-level fac-tors as well as recent literature on inequalityof opportunity, which extends bivariate mobil-ity studies by including several measures of so-cial origins. Section 6 concludes by discussingimplications of mobility research in LatinAmerica for the region and beyond. A caveat isin order at the outset: Although empirical anal-ysis of mobility in Latin America has grown inthe past decade, the literature published in peer-reviewed outlets in the English language is stillsmall. Restricting this review to those outletswould miss important contributions. I there-fore include some publications in Spanish andPortuguese and/or from non-peer-reviewedoutlets.

2. THE LATIN AMERICANCONTEXT: WIDESOCIOECONOMIC DISPARITIESAND THEIR POTENTIALIMPLICATIONS FOR MOBILITY

Latin America is often singled out because ofits persistently high levels of socioeconomicinequality. With an income Gini of 0.53 in themid-2000s, Latin America is 18% more unequalthan sub-Saharan Africa, 36% more unequalthan East Asia, and 65% more unequal thanhigh-income countries (Lopez-Calva & Lustig2010). Inequality extends to every aspect of life,from distribution of income, land, and otherassets to access to education, health services,justice and political voice and influence (deFerranti et al. 2004, Hoffman & Centeno 2003).Variation across Latin American countries issubstantial: Uruguay and Venezuela featureGinis of ∼0.45, whereas Haiti and Bolivia reach0.60 (Gasparini et al. 2011). Yet even the mostegalitarian countries in Latin America are moreuneven than advanced industrial countries.

Wide economic disparities are not a new de-velopment. Latin America has been the mostunequal region of the world since at least themid-twentieth century (Deininger & Squire1996, table 5), and economic disparities arewider than in countries at similar levels of

economic development (Gasparini et al. 2011,Londono & Szekely 2000). The most distinc-tive feature of Latin American inequality is thelarge concentration at the top of the distribu-tion and the wide difference between the richand the middle class (de Ferranti et al. 2004;IADB 1999, p. 16). Even if inequality is bydefinition correlated with concentration, theLatin American case is extreme. A useful strat-egy to calculate concentration is to comparethe gap between the wealthy and the middleclass (P90/P50) with the gap between the mid-dle class and the poor (P50/P10). In the UnitedStates, the wealthy/middle-class ratio reaches2.2 and the middle-class/poor ratio is 2.7, evenafter a massive increase in concentration atthe top over the past three decades [Piketty &Saez 2003 (updated 2013)]. In contrast, similarfigures are 3.7 and 3.2 for Chile and 3.0 and 2.9for Mexico, signaling a stronger concentrationat the top (OECD 2011).

Latin America’s level and pattern of inequal-ity appear to have deep historical roots. Theycan be traced back to colonial times, when a so-cial structure characterized by exploitation ofindigenous and black populations by a smallEuropean elite was established. Three differentapproaches explain the “early origins” of colo-nial inequality.

The first approach elaborated by economichistorians Engerman and Sokoloff (Engerman& Sokoloff 1997, Sokoloff & Engerman 2000)relies on differences in initial factor endow-ments such as the size and quality of theland, climate, and native population. Exploit-ing Latin America’s natural resources requiredlarge-scale plantations; mineral-extractive op-erations; or grain and cattle haciendas basedon slaves, indentured native servants, or debtpeonage. In these three forms, initial factor en-dowments resulted in an extreme concentrationof wealth in Spanish and Portuguese colonies.Concentration of assets allowed elites to es-tablish institutions that maintained inequalityand exclusion, denying basic protections to thelarge subordinate populations. The colonial or-der gave rise to exclusionary policies in the do-mains of land ownership, immigration, voting,

www.annualreviews.org • Intergenerational Mobility and Inequality 30.3

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education, and financial institutions, whichhampered human capital formation, access tocredit, and political participation. Educationprovides a striking example. Canada and thenorthern United States became pioneers inthe expansion of primary education. By 1900,the white literacy rate was 90% in the UnitedStates, and every locality in the northern UnitedStates had free schools supported by generaltaxes. In contrast, the Latin American elitesfiercely resisted taxation for educational pur-poses and opposed educational expansion. Asa result, by 1900, even in the most highly ed-ucated Latin American countries, the literacyrate reached only ∼50% and was less than 20%in the least-educated countries (Engerman et al.2000).

The second approach claims that the originsof Latin America’s inequality are not factor en-dowments but colonial institutions (Acemogluet al. 2001, 2002). This approach sees institu-tions as emerging from the availability of cheaplabor. In places such as Latin America whereEuropeans faced high mortality rates and largenative populations, they were more likely to setup extractive institutions. These institutionsexcluded the masses from access to economicand political power and failed to protect indi-vidual property rights and to enforce contracts.In contrast, in North American low-mortalitycontexts with sparse native populations wherelarge numbers of Europeans settled, settlerssuccessfully pushed for egalitarian, democraticinstitutional arrangements for themselves,with a strong emphasis on private propertyand checks against government power. Suchinstitutions are claimed to have persisted overtime owing to strong support from the elitesand the high costs involved in change.

The third approach complements the for-mer two by focusing on the characteristicsof colonial powers rather than the colonies,distinguishing mercantilism among Spaniardsfrom liberalism among the British. Mercan-tilistic Spain focused on resource extraction inareas where large native populations could beforced to provide free labor. In contrast, liberalBritain is claimed to have promoted profit mak-

ing through market exchange, plausibly leadingto more egalitarian institutions that protectedindividual rights (Lange et al. 2006).

Although controversy exists between theseapproaches, they have much in common. Allare strong at describing “original factors” butweaker at explaining the processes that main-tained inequality over time, tacitly assumingstrong path dependence (Bertola 2011). Giventhat much change in land ownership took placeduring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries(Coatsworth 2008), that some countries’ lib-eral elites attempted to alter the status quo inthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries withvarying levels of success (Mahoney 2003), andthat Latin American inequality appears to havesharply increased at the turn of the twenti-eth century triggered by a boom in commod-ity prices and globalization (Williamson 2010),the persistence of inequality over time cannotbe taken for granted easily. In fact, a criti-cal factor accounting for persistence appears tobe the weakness of Latin American states thatemerged after independence, which were un-able to oppose particularistic interests; enforcethe rule of law; and extract resources to investin human capital, infrastructure, or public ser-vices (Centeno 2002, Centeno & Ferraro 2013,Coatsworth 2008).

State weakness accounts for the two mainproximate determinants of inequality in con-temporary Latin America, namely the highreturns to schooling and the weak redistribu-tive role of governments. Average returns toschooling are higher in Latin America than inany other region of the world, and they are par-ticularly high for secondary and postsecondaryeducational levels (Psacharopoulos 1994).This pattern is the direct result of educationalpolicies that first restricted educational expan-sion and later focused on the postsecondarylevel before expanding secondary schooling(Morley 2001). The result is a bottom-heavypolarized distribution of educational attain-ment, resulting in a historically large premiumfor those with secondary and postsecondaryschooling. In addition, Latin American statesplay an impressively weak redistributive role

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owing to their lower tax revenues and limitedprogressivity of transfers (World Bank 2011).The comparison with Europe is striking.Around the year 2001, the Gini coefficientfor pretax pretransfer income reached 0.52 inLatin America and 0.46 in Europe, signalingsomewhat more inequality in Latin America.This difference, however, magnifies after taxesand transfers, with the Gini for disposableincome dropping to 0.31 in Europe but onlyto 0.50 in Latin America (Goni et al. 2011).

Although persistently high within a com-parative perspective, Latin American inequal-ity has fluctuated over the past four decades.Economic disparities increased in the 1980s and1990s in the context of economic crisis and mar-ket reform. The debt crisis that erupted in 1982worsened an already battered social landscape.The sudden halt in foreign finance, deteriora-tion of terms of trade, and the push to imple-ment market-oriented reforms severely affectedreal income throughout the region. As a result,most Latin American countries had lower levelsof income in 1990 than in 1980, and unemploy-ment and informality increased throughout theregion (Edwards 1995). The crisis widened in-equality because the poor were less able to pro-tect themselves from unemployment and infla-tion and were affected by the sharp cuts in socialspending (Korzeniewicz & Smith 2000, Lustig1995, Psacharopoulos et al. 1997).

The consequences of market reform forinequality are more contentious, partly becauseits different components may have offsettingconsequences. Trade and tariff liberalizationwere unambiguously regressive because theyinduced skill-biased technical change, increas-ing the already high skill premium throughoutthe region. A notable exception is Brazil, wherethe skill premium declined in the context oftrade opening (Attanasio et al. 2004, Cragg &Epelbaum 1996, Gonzaga et al. 2006). How-ever, liberalizing the capital account appears tohave been more progressive. The overall effectof market-oriented reforms appears to havebeen regressive (Morley 2001, Wood 1997).Overall, the result of crisis and reform was awidening of inequality, with the regional Gini

rising from 0.48 in the 1970s to 0.53 in 2002(de Ferranti et al. 2004).

In a surprising turn, inequality started todecline in the late 1990s and the early 2000s invirtually every Latin American country. Thisrecent equalization process is far from closingthe gap with the rest of the world, but it hasreversed growing disparities, with a drop of theGini from 0.55 in the late 1990s to ∼0.49 inthe late 2000s (Lustig et al. 2013). This reversalhas been driven by the two main proximatedeterminants of inequality: a decline in the skillpremium and an increase in the redistributiverole of the state. Educational expansion effortsover the past two decades have increased thesupply of educated workers, which, combinedwith the waning of skill-based technical changeinduced by trade liberalization, has reducedthe skill premium over the 2000s. In thelanguage of Tinbergen (1974), in the “racebetween skill-biased technological change andeducational upgrading,” the latter has nowtaken the lead in Latin America.

Latin American governments have con-tributed to equalization by augmenting andbetter targeting transfers to the poor, often inthe form of conditional cash transfers (Valencia2008). The dominant factor, however, hasbeen a decline in the skill premium. As aresult, equalization has been asymmetric, witha marked compression at the top. Whereasthe income share of the bottom decile hasremained constant at ∼1%, the share of thetop decile has dropped from 45.7% to 41.6%between 1995 and 2009 (World Bank 2011).

In sum, Latin America has historically beena “lopsided continent” (Hoffman & Centeno2003), but a noticeable equalization turn hasoccurred since the mid-1990s. Recent equaliza-tion in Latin America is all the more remarkablebecause it is the exact opposite of the recentincrease in inequality in the United States andother Anglo-Saxon countries: It is character-ized by concentration at the top and drivenby a growing college premium and weakerstate redistribution [Leigh 2009, McCall &Percheski 2010, Piketty & Saez 2003(updated 2013)].


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Much literature suggests that cross-sectional inequality results in less mobility.Several theoretical mechanisms account forthis relationship. First, inequality implieshigher returns to schooling and less pro-gressive human capital investments, both ofwhich induce intergenerational rigidity (Solon2004). High inequality may strengthen thepolitical influence of the wealthy through, forinstance, political contributions and lobbying,thus reducing the scope for redistributivepolicies (Burtless & Jencks 2003). Additionally,inequality may induce residential segregation,resulting in a more skewed composition of peergroups along socioeconomic lines (Durlauf1996, Reardon & Bischoff 2011). These mech-anisms are plausible, but they leave much tobe explained in terms of their level of analysis,appropriate time lags, first-order effects versusexternalities, potential tipping points, and thevast risk of spuriousness. As a result, ascertain-ing the causal effect of inequality on mobilitybecomes a daunting task (for a thoughtfulapproach, see (Mayer & Lopoo 2008).

At the empirical level, research shows anegative association between inequality andeconomic mobility across advanced industrialcountries. These studies consistently indicatethat egalitarian Scandinavian countries featurethe highest levels of mobility, whereas moreunequal Italy, the United Kingdom, and par-ticularly the United States are less mobile(Bjorklund & Jantti 2009, Blanden 2013, Jantti2006, Solon 2002). The negative cross-countryassociation between inequality and mobility hastranscended academia and been popularized inthe “Great Gatsby” curve (Corak 2013).

The negative association between inequalityand mobility appears to be nonexistent whenmobility is measured in terms of social classrather than income or earnings. Comparisonof 15 industrialized countries in the 1970sfound a very weak association between the Ginicoefficient and intergenerational persistence(Erikson & Goldthorpe 1992, pp. 379–89), anda more recent study comparing 10 Europeancountries in the 1990s found no relationshipat all (Breen & Luijkx 2004, pp. 395–98). The

discrepancy in findings is intriguing and raisesimportant questions about the validity of differ-ent measures of socioeconomic well-being usedto study mobility. However, empirical researchto date on the association between mobilityand inequality is largely restricted to a handfulof advanced industrial countries. Variationin terms of inequality among these countriespales when compared with Latin America. Inthis context, incorporating Latin Americancountries into the comparative analysis of socialmobility should provide a useful setting totest the potential association between mobilityand inequality as well as other macrostructuralfactors.

3. DEFINITION, MEASUREMENT,AND DATA ISSUES IN THEANALYSIS OF MOBILITY INLATIN AMERICA

Intergenerational mobility is captured by theassociation between the socioeconomic stand-ing of parents (origins) and that of their adultchildren (destinations). A weak intergenera-tional association indicates that the opportunityto succeed (or fail) is open to all, regardless oftheir social origins. Mobility is a macro-levelconcept. As with inequality, mobility appliesto societies, not to individuals. There arealways some individuals who move from ragsto riches or riches to rags. Mobility capturesprecisely how prevalent such movements are indifferent countries. Intergenerational mobilityis of interest because it provides informationabout social openness or equality of oppor-tunity. However, it is not a perfect indicator.Some mechanisms for the intergenerationalpersistence—for example, genetic inheritanceor family socialization—would exist even in asociety in which institutions fully compensatedfor socioeconomic disadvantages. If thesemechanisms strongly determine socioeco-nomic success, then the intergenerationalassociation could be high even if opportunitywas equalized ( Jencks & Tach 2006). Underthe reasonable assumption that genetic inheri-tance and family socialization do not markedly

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vary across national contexts, mobility is usefulas a metric of opportunity in different nationalcontexts.

Three sources of mobility data have beenused in the advanced industrial world. Theseinclude (a) cross-sectional samples of adult pop-ulations with retrospective questions about theparental generation, (b) panel surveys that ex-tend over a long enough period of time such thatthey include the socioeconomic attainment oftwo generations, and (c) administrative/registrydata sets with linked information for parentsand adult children. Some sources also includea combination thereof, for example linked sur-vey and social security administration data inthe United States (e.g., Mazumder 2005).

Long-term panels or administrative recordsare not yet available in Latin America, so allmobility analysis that exists relies on cross-sectional retrospective surveys (item a from pre-vious paragraph). They are available in onlysome countries in the region, and until recently,they were representative of one single city orurban area. National surveys largely emergedonly after the turn of the millennium. As a re-sult, analysis of change over time is by necessityrestricted to comparisons across cohorts usinga single cross-sectional survey, with the ensu-ing limitations of confounding cohort and ageeffects. The only (partial) exception to data lim-itations for mobility research in Latin Americais found in Brazil.

Brazil was the first country in the regionto conduct a nationally representative mobilitysurvey as early as 1973, when Brazilian scholarstrained in the United States successfully lobbiedto include a mobility module into the NationalHousehold Survey (Pesquisa Nacional porAmostra de Domicılio) to be undertaken yearlyby the Brazilian Bureau of the Census (InstitutoBrasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica). This sur-vey included a similar mobility module in 1982,1988, and 1996, thus allowing researchers toevaluate mobility over time. Table 1 offers a de-scription of available mobility surveys in LatinAmerica by country, noting information aboutyear, coverage, age range, and any parental vari-ables included (to be listed in the table, a survey

has to have information on the education andoccupation of one parent at a minimum).

Given data limitations, an alternative mea-sure of mobility used in Latin America exam-ines the association between parents’ socioeco-nomic resources and their coresident children’seducational attainment. This approach needs tobe restricted to young children so that they areobserved before the normative age of house-hold leaving (generally the early 20s) becauseadult children who still coreside with their par-ents are not representative of their peers andoffer a biased sample. A second alternative usedin Latin America focuses on the association inschooling between coresident school-age sib-lings. Sibling correlations in educational attain-ment provide what may be a broader measureof family persistence insofar as they includefamily, community, and neighborhood factorsshared by siblings (Black & Devereux 2011).Both strategies can be applied to simple house-hold cross-sectional surveys, which are avail-able in virtually all Latin American countries.However, they are restricted to educational at-tainment, which is measured relatively early inthe life cycle and cannot be extended to occu-pational or economic mobility.

4. INTERGENERATIONALMOBILITY IN LATIN AMERICA

The study of intergenerational mobility inLatin America emerged in the 1960s. The firstgeneration of mobility research was conductedentirely by sociologists. Researchers combinedsimple tabular analysis of class mobility usingad hoc occupational categories and path anal-ysis to replicate the intergenerational statusattainment model as formulated by Blau &Duncan (1967). Mobility data were availableonly in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico,and with the exception of Brazil, data wererestricted to one city.

The First Generation of ClassMobility Research: 1960s–1970s

The main concern of researchers was the im-pact of rapid structural change on the mobility


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Tab

le1

Inte

rgen

erat

iona

lsoc

ialm

obili

tysu

rvey

sin

Lat

inA

mer

ica

Cou

ntry

Nam

e(S

pani

sh/P

ortu

gues

e)N

ame

(Eng

lish)

Yea

r(s)

Pop

ulat

ion

Age

Sex

Res

pond

enta

Par

ents

’ch

arac

teri

stic

sbN

Arg

entin

aM

odul

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dad

Soci

al,

Enc

uest

ade

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pleo

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Mob

ility

surv

eym

odul

ead

ded

toth

eE

mpl

oym

enta

ndU

nem

ploy

men

tSur

vey

1969

Bue

nos

Air

esA

llag

esM

FH

HFO

1,07

2

Arg

entin

aE

ncue

sta

deM

ovili

dad

Soci

alen

Bue

nos

Air

esFo

ndec

yt19

9081

8

Soci

alM

obili

tyin

Bue

nos

Air

esSu

rvey

Fond

ecyt

1990

818

2000

Bue

nos

Air

es35

–50

MF

All

inla

bor

forc

eFE

,FO

,PA

386

Arg

entin

aE

stra

tifica

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dad:

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delA

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nos

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tifica

tion

and

Mob

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:St

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polit

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1995

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+M

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2,21

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and

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2005

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Nat

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(onl

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10)

1,51

0;1,

000;

2,26

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2007

Nat

iona

l18

+M

FA

llFE

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3,31

3

Bra

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quis

aN

acio

nalp

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mos

tra

deD

omic

ılios

(PN

AD

)

Nat

iona

lHou

seho

ldSu

rvey

1973

Nat

iona

lA

llM

FH

H+S

FO92

,421

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Bra

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Pes

quis

aN

acio

nalp

orA

mos

tra

deD

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(PN

AD

)

Nat

iona

lHou

seho

ldSu

rvey

1982

Nat

iona

lA

llM

FH

H+S

FE,F

O,M

E15

7,39

0c

Bra

zil

Pes

quis

aN

acio

nalp

orA

mos

tra

deD

omic

ılios

(PN

AD

)

Nat

iona

lHou

seho

ldSu

rvey

1988

Nat

iona

lA

llM

FH

H+S

FE,F

O,M

E96

,307

c

Bra

zil

Pes

quis

aN

acio

nalp

orA

mos

tra

deD

omic

ılios

(PN

AD

)

Nat

iona

lHou

seho

ldSu

rvey

1996

Nat

iona

lA

llM

FH

H+S

FE,F

O,M

E11

7,31

0c

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ofIn

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lity

Surv

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08N

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All

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+SFE

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12,3

26

Chi

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ncue

sta

Nac

iona

lde

Mov

ilida

dSo

cial

enC

hile

Chi

lean

Soci

alM

obili

tySu

rvey

2001

Nat

iona

l25

–69

MH

HFE

,FO

,ME

,PA

3,54

4

Chi

leE

ncue

sta

deM

ovili

dad

Soci

alen

Sant

iago

Fond

ecyt

1990

818

Soci

alM

obili

tyin

Sant

iago

Surv

eyFo

ndec

yt19

9081

820

00Sa

ntia

go35

–50

MF

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inla

bor

forc

eFE

,FO

,PA

581

Mex

ico

Mov

ilida

dSo

cial

yG

eogr

afica

enM

onte

rrey

Mon

terr

eyM

obili

tySt

udy

1965

Mon

terr

ey21

–60

MFE

,FO

,ME

1,80

3

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Mex

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30–3

2,45

–47,

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496

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chances of urban populations over the twen-tieth century. Industrialization, urbanization,internal migration, and fertility decline cre-ated much room at the top and providedopportunities for occupational upgrading tothose with disadvantaged origins, resultingin extensive upward mobility. In Argentina,Germani (1963) documented massive flows ofupward mobility and explained them via thedynamism of the Argentinean economy andthe large rates of international migration at theturn of the twentieth century, larger even thanin the United States. Early analysis suggestsArgentina had levels of intergenerational asso-ciation even lower than those of industrializedcountries and other Latin American countriessuch as Brazil and Chile (Beccaria 1978,Raczynski 1973). In Brazil, Pastore (1982)conducted a pioneer analysis of class mobility.The main finding was the very high level ofupward mobility driven by urbanization andindustrialization processes that altered the classstructure in a single generation. The transfor-mation was striking: Approximately 70% ofadult men in 1973 had origins in rural classes,but only 30% of them held rural occupations.

The second strategy used by the first gener-ation of Latin American mobility scholars wasthe replication of the path analysis of Blau &Duncan (1967, pp. 163–84) to examine howsubsequent factors across the individual life-cycle (e.g., father’s education and occupation,individual educational attainment, and labormarket entry) shape current individual occu-pational status. One important concern for re-searchers was the differences in the stratifica-tion process in Latin America compared withthose in the United States and other wealthycountries. The classic status attainment modelwas replicated in Santiago, Chile (Lincoln 1978,Wilson 1972); Buenos Aires, Argentina ( Jorrat1992, Wilson 1972); Monterrey, Mexico (Balanet al. 1973, p. 293); and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil(Wilson 1972).

The overall finding from this body of re-search was the similarities in the stratificationprocess between Latin America and the UnitedStates. Both the total influence of a father’s

resources on his son’s attainment and the largemediating role of education in the stratifica-tion process were very similar in Latin Americaand the United States. When there were differ-ences, they pointed to larger returns to educa-tion in urban Latin America (e.g., Balan et al.1973, pp. 292–94). Similarity is not an artifactof little variation around the world. As shownby Treiman & Yip (1989), much heterogeneityacross countries exists, and social origins tend todisplay a stronger influence in developing coun-tries. The comparative exercise did not, how-ever, produce a broader theoretical reflectionabout the sources of international commonal-ity and variation in stratification dynamics indifferent macrostructural contexts.

The Second Generation of ClassMobility Research: Since the 1990s

After these initial studies in the 1960s and1970s, mobility research virtually disappearedfor nearly a quarter century in Latin America.The reasons include an ideological rejection ofquantitative approaches of US provenance andthe deep debt crisis during the 1980s. So deepwas the crisis that the 1980s came to be knownas “the lost decade” in Latin America, and so-cial scientists’ concerns were almost exclusivelyfocused on questions about absolute depriva-tion. As the economic situation improved in the1990s and 2000s, a renewed concern about in-equality of opportunity emerged, and mobilitysurveys were conducted in several countries.

This impulse gave rise to the second gen-eration of mobility research in the region. In-depth mobility analysis was still restricted to afew countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile,and Mexico. However, more limited compar-ative analysis included a larger number of na-tions. As did the first generation, the secondgeneration replicated questions and method-ologies developed in the advanced industrialworld. In contrast to the first generation of re-search, recent work includes contributions fromsociologists and economists. Sociologists havefocused on an analysis of class mobility, mov-ing from ad hoc to international comparable

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class classifications. The preferred class classifi-cation has been the EGP (Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero) schema (after Erikson et al. 1979),which has become the referent for interna-tional comparative analysis of intergenerationalmobility. In its seven-class version typicallyused for comparative research, this classifica-tion distinguishes the following classes: pro-fessionals and managers, clerical workers, self-employed, farmers, skilled manual workers,nonskilled manual workers, and agricultural la-borers (Erikson & Goldthorpe 1992, pp. 35–47). In terms of methodology, the second gen-eration relies on log-linear models distinguish-ing absolute mobility flows from relative mobil-ity or social fluidity as captured by odds ratios.

Second-generation mobility research inLatin America has addressed two importanthypotheses about homogeneity in social fluid-ity across countries over time. The commonfluidity hypothesis states that countries share asimilar pattern of mobility, even if the strengthof intergenerational association may varyacross country. The constant fluidity hypothe-sis states that social fluidity does not vary overtime in spite of industrialization and institu-tional change (Featherman et al. 1975). Bothhypotheses have found much empirical supportbut have also been questioned (for reviews,see Ganzeboom et al. 1991, Hout & DiPrete2006). In particular, constant fluidity has beenquestioned by growing class fluidity in theUnited States and many European countries(Breen 2004, Hout 1988), driven by equal-ization of educational opportunity and by acompositional effect whereby, over time, morepeople reach higher levels of schooling wherethe intergenerational association is weaker(Breen & Jonsson 2007, Breen et al. 2009).

Second-generation class mobility researchin Latin America generally supports commonfluidity but rebuffs constant fluidity. In Brazil,Ribeiro (2007 p. 288) used the EGP classschema to compare the strength of social flu-idity in Brazil with that of European countries.He found that Brazil is in the middle of thepack: Brazilian rates of fluidity are comparablewith those of England, Germany, and Hungary,

in spite of high levels of inequality. In termsof temporal change, Brazil has experienced aclear increase in social fluidity between the early1970s and the late 1990s, driven by a decline inthe intergenerational reproduction of the pro-fessional class (Pastore & do Valle Silva 2000,Ribeiro 2007, Ribeiro & Scalon 2001). Eventhough this pattern replicates the growing flu-idity found in the United States and Europeancountries, its mechanisms are different. No ev-idence about either equalization of educationalopportunity or a compositional effect is foundin Brazil. Instead, growing fluidity is driven by adecline in the skill premium and by a weaker di-rect association between the net association oforigins and destinations, after controlling foreducation (Torche & Ribeiro 2010).

Using the EGP class schema, Torche (2005)compared social fluidity in Chile with that of in-dustrialized countries. As in Brazil, a surprisingfinding emerges: Social fluidity in Chile is com-parable to that of the most fluid industrializedcountries, in spite of the wide economic dis-parities in the former. Torche found that thepattern of class mobility is characterized by astrong barrier to mobility to and from the pro-fessional class at the top of the occupationalstructure but much higher fluidity between themiddle and lower classes, a pattern consistentwith high income concentration at the top.However, Espinoza et al. (2013) found strongbarriers at both extremes of the occupationalhierarchy. The second generation research inArgentina also highlights stronger persistenceat the upper end of the occupational distribu-tion ( Jorrat 2000, p. 217).

Second generation studies in Mexico alsoquestion the constant fluidity hypothesis, butin the opposite direction of Brazil: Whereasclass fluidity increased in Brazil, it declinedin Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s in thecontext of economic crisis and market reform(Cortes & Escobar Latapı 2005, Solıs 2005,Zenteno & Solıs 2006). Specifically, access tothe professional and managerial class at thetop of the distribution became more stratifiedby social background (Cortes & EscobarLatapı 2005). Comparative analysis shows


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that immobility at the top is much more pro-nounced in Mexico than in the United States(Huerta-Wong et al. 2013). These findingsare consistent with the substantial immobilityat the top found in Argentina and Chile andsuggest a particularly Latin American patternof intergenerational class reproduction charac-terized by strong intergenerational persistenceof the upper class. Mexican studies also suggestthat the mechanism for increased reproductionat the top is growing inequality of educationalopportunity, which most affected the cohorteducated during the 1980s economic crisis(Binder & Woodruff 2002).

In sum, recent class mobility research inLatin America is surprisingly consistent withcommon fluidity. Not only is there no indi-cation of differences in pattern, but remark-ably, the intergenerational class association isnot stronger in Latin American countries thanin the advanced industrial world in spite of theformer’s higher levels of inequality. The LatinAmerican case also questions the constant flu-idity hypothesis. Whereas Brazil showed an in-crease in fluidity, Mexico showed a decline.Both cases are noteworthy: In Brazil, the mech-anisms driving growing fluidity depart fromthose found in industrialized countries, whereasMexico joins Russia as the only other countryin the world where a decline in fluidity has beenfound (Gerber & Hout 2004). Furthermore, inboth Mexico and Russia, this decline occurredin the context of economic crisis and marketreform.

International Comparability of ClassMobility Analysis

The use of standard class classifications such asEGP by second-generation mobility researchassumes that these classifications capture themain sources of cleavages in Latin Ameri-can societies and allow meaningful compari-son. Without falling into an Orientalist empha-sis on differences, one could assert that a classschema developed in and for the industrializedworld fails to consider relevant social cleav-ages in Latin America. Given Latin America’s

pattern of development, important differencesmay affect the position of some classes, partic-ularly farmers, self-employed, and profession-als/managers. Class classifications developedin the industrial world—EGP in particular—distinguish farmers from farm workers becausetheir control of land results in more economicsecurity and higher living standards. The dis-tinction is less meaningful in most of LatinAmerica. Given the concentration of land own-ership (Torche & Spilerman 2008), small land-holders control minimal amounts of land andare usually engaged in subsistence farming. Asa result, Latin American farmers are far froma rural bourgeoisie and closer to the rural pro-letariat. Their mobility chances are as—if notmore—limited than farm workers insofar as at-tachment to the land constrains migration insearch of better opportunity.

The EGP classification also identifies a self-employed class of small proprietors with andwithout employees. This class is much largerand more heterogeneous in Latin America. Afew of its members are well-to-do small businessowners in formal enterprises. However, thevast majority are owners or employers in small,low-capital, precarious firms that operate out-side legal regulation and protection. This typeof employment arrangement is so prevalent inLatin America that it has given rise to the notionof the informal sector (Infante & Klein 1995,Portes et al. 1989), which expanded during thecrisis and market transformation and currentlycomprises between one-fourth and two-thirdsof employment in Latin American countries. Ina context where “a significant proportion of thepopulation is not incorporated into fully com-modified, legally regulated working relations,but survives at their margin in a wide variety ofsubsistence and semiclandestine economic ac-tivities” (Portes & Hoffman 2003, p. 43), a dis-tinction is necessary between a relatively secure“petty bourgeoisie” and informal workers withfew assets and precarious business ventures.Finally, in its seven-class version commonlyused for international comparative research,the top professional/managerial class of theEGP comprises professionals, administrators,

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managers, higher-grade technicians, and super-visors of nonmanual workers. The combinationof rapid postindustrialization of Latin Americaneconomies and a pattern of inequality char-acterized by concentration at the top suggeststhat finer distinctions at the upper end of thedistribution may capture important mobilitybarriers.

These issues can be seen as examples of avery general problem of aggregation. Classesare highly aggregated entities that necessarilymiss some important distinctions between oc-cupations (e.g., Weeden & Grusky 2005). Thecritical question is whether, given an agreed-upon number of categories, a class schema de-vised in one context captures the main deter-minants of inequality in other contexts. Thisquestion has scarcely been examined in LatinAmerica, and when it has, the surprising an-swer appears to be in the affirmative. For ex-ample, Scalon (1999, p. 71) collapsed a detailedoccupational classification into nine categoriesaccording to their mobility patterns and lifechances to obtain a classification nearly iden-tical to the EGP schema. Torche (2006) usedan empirical strategy to collapse detailed occu-pations in Chile and also obtained a classifica-tion akin to the EGP schema. More importantfor this question, the main substantive findingsabout mobility in Chile are virtually identicalto those found using the EGP classification. Bythe same token, Solıs (2010) derived a class clas-sification for Mexican society and found veryminor departures from the EGP schema. Fur-ther historically informed research in this areawill ensure that intergenerational stratificationdynamics are appropriately captured and willinform the discussion about generalizability ofstandard class classifications.

Economic Mobility in Latin America

The study of economic mobility is a recentcomponent of the second generation of re-search, and to the best of my knowledge, itis restricted to Brazil, Chile, and (with quali-fications) Mexico. Because no long-term paneldata exist in the region and collecting retrospec-

tive information about parental income is unvi-able, researchers have implemented a two-stageinstrumental variable (TSIV) strategy (Angrist& Krueger 1992). This strategy is used whenthere is no actual information on father-childpairs but there is matched information on chil-dren’s earnings and some determinants of fa-thers’ earnings, such as schooling and occupa-tion. The strategy uses information from twosurveys. In a first step, earnings equations areestimated on an older sample of men (whichrepresents the parental generation), and coeffi-cients for the determinants of fathers’ earningsare obtained. These coefficients can then beused to predict the earnings of fathers of a sam-ple of adult children.1 As with all instrumentalvariable approaches, this strategy produces es-timators of intergenerational persistence thatwill be upwardly biased if the variables usedto predict fathers’ earnings have a direct ef-fect on children’s earnings. Therefore, they canbe used as an upper bound of intergenerationalpersistence. This technique has been used inseveral countries including Sweden, the UnitedStates, Italy, and France (Bjorklund & Jantti1997, Lefranc & Trannoy 2005, Piraino 2007).

Using the TSIV approach, Ferreira &Veloso (2006) and Dunn (2007) analyzed in-tergenerational mobility of earnings and wagesin Brazil. Ferreira & Veloso (2006) found avery high intergenerational earnings elasticityof 0.66, indicating that a 100% increase in afather’s earnings with respect to his mean willresult, on average, in a 66% increase in an adultson’s earnings with respect to his mean. Dunn(2007) found an intergenerational elasticity of0.69 among men aged 25–34, which reaches0.85 when measures of lifetime earnings areused. These levels of intergenerational associ-ation are much higher than comparable figuresof between 0.42 and 0.52 found in the United

1Sociologists will notice that TSIV is actually an extensionof Duncan’s (1961) occupational status for all occupations,which used a father’s education and income to predict occu-pational prestige scores, although economists appear to beunaware of this connection.



States using an identical technique (Bjorklund& Jantti 1997).

Economic mobility is also much weakerin Chile than in the United States. Using aTSIV approach, Nunez & Miranda (2010) re-ported earnings elasticity between 0.57 and0.73 among men, although mobility may be in-creasing among younger cohorts (Sapelli 2011).Torche (2010a) examined economic mobility inMexico. Lacking two samples to predict fathers’income, she obtained a measure of “permanentincome” for both generations by combining oc-cupational status and a battery of householditems and services. She found an intergenera-tional correlation of 0.67—much stronger thanin the industrial world and Chile. Although thisfigure is not directly comparable, its high valuesuggests strong intergenerational persistence inMexican society too.

By examining intergenerational earningsquintiles mobility tables, these studies havealso considered the pattern of economic mo-bility. Results show an asymmetrical patternwith stronger persistence at the top than atthe bottom in every country. In Brazil, 35%of those with origins in the poorest quintileremain poor, whereas 43% of those with ori-gins in the wealthiest quintile remain wealthy(Ferreira & Veloso 2006). Comparable figuresfor persistence of poverty and wealth are, re-spectively, 37% and 47% in Chile (Nunez &Miranda 2010) and 38% and 58% in Mexico(Torche 2010a). Strong reproduction at the topcontrasts with findings in advanced industrialcountries. In the United States, the persistenceis 42% in the bottom quintile and 36% in thetop quintile. Comparable figures are 30% and30% in the United Kingdom and 28% and 35%in Norway ( Jantti 2006).

In sum, the still-new and scattered litera-ture on economic mobility in Latin America hasfound a level of intergenerational persistencemuch stronger than that in industrialized coun-tries, which is consistent with the higher levelsof inequality in the region. These findings con-trast with the similar levels of class mobility be-tween Latin America and industrialized coun-tries. In one respect, however, economic and

occupational mobility studies in Latin Amer-ica are consistent: Both studies highlight anasymmetric pattern of intergenerational persis-tence that is characterized by strong reproduc-tion at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchycombined with more fluidity across middle andlower segments. This, again, resembles the pat-tern of inequality in the region.

Inequality of Opportunity

The second generation of mobility research islargely bivariate, concentrating on the overallassociation between origins and destinationswithout including mediating factors. One wayeconomists have transcended a bivariate focusis by considering diverse dimensions of socialorigins. This strategy builds on Roemer’s(1998) distinction between “circumstances”and “efforts.” Circumstances are factors forwhich individuals cannot reasonably be heldresponsible, such as gender, race, and familybackground. Efforts are factors over whichindividuals have a measure of control, suchas educational attainment and occupationalchoice.2 Equality of opportunity is measured bythe situation in which individual socioeconomicattainment, measured, for example, by income,is distributed independently of circumstances.Empirically, this strategy evaluates the propor-tion of a country’s total income inequality thatis accounted for by circumstances of origin.

In a seminal paper analyzing the Braziliancase, Bourguignon et al. (2007) considered therole that circumstances play in accounting forearnings inequality. The circumstances consid-ered are parents’ education, father’s occupa-tion, region, and race. They found that ∼25%of earnings inequality is accounted for by “cir-cumstances.” This figure compares with 20%in Italy (Checchi & Peragine 2010) and a muchlower proportion in other advanced indus-trial countries (Lefranc et al. 2008, Marrero &

2Sociologists will note the close parallel with traditional so-ciological distinction between ascription and achievement(Parsons 1951), which has gone unnoticed by economists.

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Rodriguez 2012), indicating that the “accidentsof birth” are much more consequential for eco-nomic disparities in Brazil. Consistent with thetrend in growing fluidity in Brazil, the share ofinequality attributable to circumstances appearsto be weaker among younger cohorts.

The study by Bourguignon et al. (2007) hasgiven rise to a small cottage industry of re-search on inequality of opportunity in LatinAmerica. In Chile, Nunez & Tartakowsky(2010) found that circumstances account for∼20% of income inequality. Paes de Barroet al. (2009) extended research to seven otherLatin American countries: Brazil, Colombia,Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, andPeru. Ferreira & Gignoux (2011) studied thesame set except for Mexico. Both examined therole that circumstances play in earnings, in-come, and consumption inequality. They foundthat circumstances account for ∼30% of earn-ings inequality and for a higher percentage ofconsumption inequality. All these studies foundthat parental education is the most influentialcircumstance; ethnicity and region of birth havesmaller roles. The strong influence of parents’education is similar in Latin America and in theUnited States, where the dominance of race hasbeen replaced by parental education in the pasttwo decades (Marrero & Rodriguez 2011). Al-though the circumstances they account for arenot exactly the same across countries, compara-ble tests with a shared set of variables indicatethat inequality of opportunity is much widerin Latin America than in advanced industrialcountries.

Comparative Studies of SocialMobility in Latin America

A few studies take a multicountry comparativeapproach, placing Latin American in the in-ternational context. These studies consistentlyfind that Latin America has less educationaland economic mobility than developed andeven developing countries. A landmark study byBehrman et al. (2001) studied intergenerationaleducational mobility in four countries: Brazil,Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. They found

mobility to be much more limited in LatinAmerica than in the United States. The associ-ation of years of schooling between parents andadult children is ∼0.5 in Mexico and Peru and∼0.7 in Brazil and Colombia, compared with0.35 in the United States. Hertz et al. (2007)compared the intergenerational correlation ofyears of schooling across 42 countries and foundthat Latin America features the strongest corre-lations in the world. The seven Latin Americancountries they included display an average cor-relation of 0.60, which compares with 0.41 foreight Eastern Bloc nations, 0.39 for ten Asianand Western nations, and 0.36 for a small sam-ple of four African countries.

Using a TSIV strategy for all developing na-tions (except for Malaysia), Grawe (2004) com-pared earnings mobility in the United States,Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany,Malaysia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Peru, andEcuador. He found extremely high inter-generational earnings elasticities in Peru andespecially in Ecuador, reaching a whopping0.67 and 1.13, respectively (elasticities largerthan 1 are extremely unusal and signal acombination of strong intergenerationalpersistence and a large increase in inequalityacross generations). These levels of intergen-erational association compare with coefficientsranging from 0.10 in Germany to ∼0.55 inthe United States and Malaysia. Also usinga TSIV approach, Andrews & Leigh (2009)compared economic mobility across 16 mostlyindustrialized countries. Chile is the only LatinAmerican country included in the comparisonand has the dubious honor of being the leastmobile in the pool, with an outlying intergen-erational correlation of 0.41, compared withan average of 0.20 for the other nations.

Other studies have focused on the associa-tion between parental resources and the educa-tional attainment of their coresident childrenaround the year 2000. This strategy allows theinclusion of more countries because it requiresonly cross-sectional household surveys. Usingthe United States as a benchmark, Dahan &Gaviria (2001) examined the correlation amongsiblings in terms of their probability of being


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above the average educational attainmentfor their age in Latin America. They foundLatin American correlations ranging from 0.34in Costa Rica to 0.59 in El Salvador, muchhigher than the correlation of 0.21 foundin the United States. Behrman et al. (2001)confirmed this wide gap. They reported siblingcorrelations in the probability of being abovethe median years of schooling ranged from 0.37in Paraguay to 0.61 in El Salvador across the 20Latin American countries, much higher thanthe 0.21 correlation they found for the UnitedStates. Although scattered, cross-countrycomparative analysis is relevant because itconfirms that Latin American nations featurevery low mobility, apparently even lower thancountries with similar levels of development.

Macro-Level Factors andIntergenerational Mobility

A small literature has examined the associa-tion between macro-level factors and mobil-ity across Latin American countries. Given datalimitations, analysis is restricted to educationalmobility of young adults who coreside withtheir parents. The contextual factors examinedinclude public spending on education, inequal-ity of schooling, per capita GDP, and macroe-conomic conditions such as trade liberalization,financial depth, and inflation, which were rad-ically altered during the market reforms in the1980s and 1990s. Studies find that mean level ofschooling, economic development, and better-developed financial markets have a positive as-sociation with educational mobility (Behrmanet al. 1999, Dahan & Gaviria 2001). The asso-ciation between financial markets and mobilityis relevant because it reveals severe credit con-straints among the poor.

Research also finds a surprisingly weak asso-ciation between mobility and public spendingin education in Latin America (Behrman et al.1999, Dahan & Gaviria 2001). This contrastswith comparisons across industrialized coun-tries, which show that educational spending in-creases mobility (Blanden 2013). The likely ex-planation is that Latin American governments

have allocated a larger portion of their educa-tional budgets to higher education than haveother countries (Wolff & de Moura Castro2004). Spending on higher education tends tobenefit more affluent families whose childrenremain in school longer, so it provides a heftysubsidy to the Latin American upper class. Thisfinding highlights the need for a careful exam-ination of the meaning of standard variablesused in comparative quantitative analysis acrosscontexts.

Much research examines the effect ofeconomic crisis on educational attainment (foran excellent summary, see Ferreira & Schady2009). However, these studies focus on theeffect of crisis on the mean level of educationalattainment rather than its allocation by socialorigins. The few studies that examine the effectof the macroeconomic context on educationalmobility consistently find a negative effect ofcrisis (Binder & Woodruff 2002, Marteletoet al. 2012, Rucci 2003, Torche 2010b).Interestingly, Latin American economic crisesproduce different effects for poor and wealthyhouseholds. A positive substitution effectresults in educational gains among the wealthy,whereas a negative income effect results inlosses among the poor. The end result is astronger influence of social origins on educa-tional attainment. This emerging literature onthe macrostructural context of mobility is animportant contribution and is likely to expandas more countries gather mobility data. Assuch, the literature is moving from ad hoc to amore systematic, theory-driven examination ofcontextual factors.

6. DISCUSSION: TAKING STOCKOF INTERGENERATIONALMOBILITY IN LATIN AMERICA

A distinctive characteristic of Latin Americansocieties is their high level of economic inequal-ity. If, as empirical research suggests, inequalityis negatively correlated with mobility, mobilityshould be lower in Latin America than it is inindustrialized countries. Comparative researchon economic mobility, educational mobility,

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and equality of opportunity strongly supportsthis assumption. Compared to industrializedcountries and even to nations with similar levelsof development, Latin America is less mobile.The story emerging from class mobility is dif-ferent, however. Social class fluidity is generallyno less in Latin American than in the industri-alized world.

What to make of this discrepancy? Differ-ent measures of economic standing providea dissimilar evaluation of intergenerationalmobility to the extent that the distributionsof these measures are not perfectly correlatedand, crucially, to the extent that deviationsacross distributions are strongly correlatedacross generations (Bjorklund & Jantti 2000).For example, Blanden (2013) showed thatclass mobility is higher but income mobility islower in the United States than in the UnitedKingdom. The reason is that much of theincome persistence in the United States occursvia educational attainment within classes.

Even if plausible, this discrepancy questionsthe usefulness of social class to describe pro-cesses of intergenerational stratification, in par-ticular if the focus of the research is economicwell-being rather than outcomes such as col-lective identity and collective action. The issueis not simply whether a particular class classi-fication such as the EGP is adequate. In fact,empirically obtained class schemas provide an-swers about mobility that are similar to those ofthe EGP in Latin America. The core of the issueis whether criteria for occupational aggregationthat give rise to class categories miss substantialassets anchoring socioeconomic persistence.

Should we then abandon social class and relyexclusively on measures of income or consump-tion to study mobility in Latin America? Thesemeasures have their own limitations, includingthe practical difficulties of measuring earningsin a context with a large informal sector, per-suading the Latin American upper class to re-port their income (Szekely & Hilgert 2007), aswell as the theoretical shallowness of measuresthat provide no information about the struc-tural causes of inequality (Portes & Hoffman2003). Should we move from aggregate

measures of class to detailed occupations or mi-croclasses (e.g., Jonsson et al. 2009, Weeden &Grusky 2005)? Although occupational analysisprovides important insights that would be wel-come in Latin America, it is difficult to obtain aconclusive answer about the persistence of so-cioeconomic disadvantage if we rely solely onoccupational categories. The answer is not clearat this point, but “business as usual” is not a vi-able strategy. The Latin American case, withits sharp contradiction between economic andclass mobility, invites sociologists to reconsiderthe measurement of mobility to strengthen itscontribution to conversations about economicinequality.

Mobility research has regained importancein Latin America since the late 1990s, pushedby a renewed concern for inequality of op-portunity. However, in-depth studies are stillrestricted to a few Latin American nations:Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. An im-portant task is the extension of research to otherLatin American countries. This task is lessonerous than it may appear. Now that virtuallyevery country in the region conducts large,nationally representative, household surveyson a regular basis, a small set of retrospectivequestions about social origins could be added tosuch surveys, and strategies such as TSIV couldbe used to combine information across surveys.This would allow for basic sociological andeconomic analysis of mobility across the region.

Another area that needs development is thestudy of women’s mobility, which has beenthe focus of only a few studies in select coun-tries (see, for example, Scalon 1999 and Ribeiro2007 in Brazil and Cortes & Escobar Latapı2005 in Mexico). This limitation is understand-able. Women’s participation in Latin America’slabor force is low in comparative perspective(Abramo & Valenzuela 2005), and sample sizeconstraints have compelled researchers to focuson men. However, these reasons are increas-ingly less valid as women’s economic partici-pation increases, and a large literature suggeststhat neglecting women’s standing misses im-portant components of the stratification pro-cess (Beller 2009, Sorensen 1994). This effort



will require collecting information about maleand female respondents as well as their fathersand mothers.

As in the industrialized world, analysis ofmobility in Latin America is largely bivariate.This is no small feat given the methodologicalchallenges of obtaining unbiased and compara-ble estimates of intergenerational persistence.However, research needs to be expanded tounderstand the role that different dimensionsof social origins (such as race/ethnicity, fam-ily structure, wealth, and rural/urban residence)and mediating factors (such as education, oc-cupational trajectory, and migration) play inthe mobility process. Although research exam-ines ascriptive sources of inequality in LatinAmerica, including race/ethnicity and skincolor (Telles 2004, Villarreal 2010), parentalwealth (Torche & Ribeiro 2012), and assor-tative mating (Esteve & McCaa 2007, Torche2010c), explicit links between these literaturesand the work on intergenerational mobilitycould be strengthened.

A particularly important concern is the rolethat educational attainment plays in the inter-generational stratification process. Given thatLatin America’s inequality is largely accountedfor by high returns to skill, education is likelyto play a pivotal role in intergenerational re-production. So far, the evidence is scarce, butexisting studies suggest the mediating role ofeducation is extremely strong, perhaps evenstronger in Latin America than in the advancedindustrial world (Balan et al. 1973, Jorrat 2000,Ribeiro 2008, Solıs 2007). From one perspec-tive, the strong mediating role of education isgood news: the transmission of advantage netof education reflects processes such as the useof social capital or the direct inheritance ofwealth, which are seen as pure ascription. How-ever, the strong mediating role of educationcreates a situation of “inherited meritocracy”—intergenerational persistence that is legitimizedand naturalized by educational attainment—when, in fact, this situation emerges fromthe strong barriers that disadvantaged fami-lies in Latin America face to access quantityand quality of education. Studies testing the

strength and patterns of inherited meritocracyacross Latin American countries would pro-vide important insight into the contributionof educational inequality to intergenerationalpersistence.

Most mobility research in Latin Americahas pursued questions and used analytical ap-proaches developed in the industrialized world.Although this facilitates comparative research,meaningful comparison requires a deep under-standing of national contexts. Three examplesfrom this review illustrate this challenge. First,the association between public spending oneducation and mobility is strong in industrial-ized countries but null in Latin America. Thiscounterintuitive finding emerges because LatinAmerican public spending is less progressive,favoring higher education, which favors themiddle class. Second, the apparent lack of as-sociation between inequality and class mobilityin Latin America reemerges once the analyticalfocus is switched from the level to the patternof both inequality and mobility. In LatinAmerica, high economic concentration at thetop is correlated with a strong intergenerationalreproduction of the elite professional class.Third, trade-opening reforms implementedin Latin America in the 1990s expanded theskill premium in Mexico (as in most of LatinAmerica), resulting in less mobility. However,the very same trade-opening strategy narrowedthe skill premium in Brazil, contributing to anincrease in mobility. As these examples high-light, explaining mobility variation in terms of“generalizable attributes of societies so that thenames of nations can be substituted for thoseof variables” (Przeworski & Teune 1970)—anapproach that those of us who are quantitativelyinclined tend to embrace enthusiastically andsometimes naively—is a challenging task andrequires nuanced historical knowledge of thecountries compared.

Finally, the stark contrast in inequalitytrends between Latin America and the UnitedStates is impossible to miss. Over the past twodecades, Latin America has moved away fromits historically high levels of inequality thanksto a decline in the skill premium, which reduces

30.18 Torche


concentration at the top, precisely as inequalityincreases in the United States, driven by rapidincome growth among top earners. Evaluating

the implications of these contrasting trends formobility dynamics may prove beneficial for cit-izens of both contexts alike.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that mightbe perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is grateful to Jorge Raul Jorrat, Luis Felipe Lopez Calva, Nicole Marwell, PatricioSolıs, Carlos C. Ribeiro, and an anonymous reviewer for the Annual Review of Sociology for theirhelp and valuable comments.

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