The gender gap in intergenerational mobility

Abstract

This paper employs mobility matrices, univariate regressions and multivariate econometric techniques based on the recently published Brazilian National Household Sampling Survey to investigate the relevance of the gendered patterns in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. The empirical evidence from these three different approaches is absolutely unanimous: In Brazil there is a significant variation in degree of mobility across genders, with a higher mobility level for daughters than for sons. The reason for this gender gap in mobility lies in the chances of attaining the educational levels: regardless of the educational background of the parents, females have a lower chance of remaining without school certificate and a greater probability to achieve a tertiary education. This study has demonstrated also that the educational attainment of children is strongly associated with the education of their most educated parent, regardless of their gender and this correlation is higher for female than for male.