<i>Epur si muove?</i> Movilidad, pobreza y desigualdad en América Latina

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contribute with the research of poverty and income distribution by analyzing an often overloooked dimension, social mobility. Given the data restrictions, we focus on intergenerational mobility. We compute three main indicators of mobility for Latin American countries at the beggining of the 1990s and 2000s: the social mobility index (Andersen, 2001), the intergenerational schooling mobility index (Birdsall y Székely, 1998), and the sibling correlation index (Dahan y Gaviria, 1999). Then, we analize the link between the evolution of mobility and that of inequality. The results indicate that mobility increased during the period under study, but there are differences among countries in the region. Also, we found evidence of a negative relation between mobility and inequality.