Intergenerational Income Mobility in a Less-Developed, High-Inequality Context: The Case of Chile

Abstract

This paper studies the magnitude of intergenerational income mobility in less developed, high inequality Chile. Following a known methodology where fathers’ incomes are predicted from standard income determinants such as education and occupation, we get comparable estimates of the intergenerational income elasticity in the range of 0.57 to 0.74 and 0.63 to 0.76 for ages 25-40 and 31-40, respectively. These values place Chile at the high end of the available international evidence. Considering Chile’s high income inequality, this finding supports the hypothesis proposed in the literature of an inverse relationship between cross-sectional income inequality and intergenerational income mobility