Social Mobility and Religion: Evidence from Lebanon

Abstract

This paper builds an index of social mobility for Lebanon and measures social mobility within Lebanese religious groups. The paper shows that, on average, Lebanon is characterized by extremely low levels of social mobility, comparable to those of the least socially mobile Latin American countries. The paper also finds that, even after controlling for income, there are large differences in social mobility across religious groups and shows that the Christian Maronite and Muslim Shiite are the most socially mobile groups in Lebanon and that the Muslim Sunni is the group with the lowest level of social mobility.