effect of a higher intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment on the youth’s intergenerational occupational mobility?

2. What are the determinants of the occupational attainment of the rural youth beneficiaries? Do differences by sex, ethnic background or migratory condition exist?

Addressing the first set of questions will enable us to identify how much the social stratum of the rural beneficiary youths of PROSPERA has changed relative to their providers (usually their parents), as well as the strength and pattern of the association between their occupational origins and destinations. Furthermore, we will explore if this varies by sex, ethnic background or migratory status, as well as if a higher intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment increases intergenerational mobility and reduces inequality of opportunities.<sup>5</sup> The analysis of these questions is carried out through the construction of intergenerational occupational mobility tables, the calculation of the absolute mobility rates and the application of log-linear models to analyze relative mobility or inequality of opportunities.

The analysis of the second set of questions will identify some of the factors, and the strength to which they do, that affect the occupational attainment of rural beneficiary youths of PROSPERA and that may help to have a better understanding of the results of the first set of questions. It is important to identify how much weight some ascribed factors related to their social origin (the constructs of social origin and the provider’s cognitive abilities) and non-ascribed factors that act as mediators between social origin and occupational attainment (the constructs of the youth’s cognitive abilities, education and first occupation) have on the youths’ occupational attainment. Likewise, it will allow us to know if other ascribed characteristics such as sex and ethnic background shape this process and whether migration from their locality of origin can reduce the weight of the ascribed factors.

This document is structured into seven sections, beginning with this introduction. Section II contextualizes the design, impacts and limitations of PROSPERA within the macroeconomic and social development context of Mexico during the past two decades. Section III provides the analytical framework that guides our research, based on the studies of intergenerational social mobility, specifically those within the occupational area. Section IV describes the methodological design of the study, including the description of the study group, the proposed design to assess the characteristics of the program, as well as the variables and methods used for the empirical analysis. Section V presents the results related to the first set of questions, referring to the characteristics of intergenerational occupational mobility of the rural youth beneficiaries and the effects of the intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment in this context. Section VI does the same for the second set of questions on the determinants of the occupational attainment of this group of youths. Finally, we conclude with a summary of the findings and some closing remarks derived

> 5 Equality of opportunities is a conception of social justice that enables free access to different socioeconomic positions for any individual regardless of the socioeconomic position of origin or other factors such as sex or ethnic backgrounds, since the core premise is that their own merits are sufficient for achieving a person’s rightful place in society (Turner, 1986; Breen and Jonsson, 2005; Dubet, 2014). Therefore, a policy of equality of opportunities will make it so that the degree to which individuals will achieve the objective (welfare, education, income, etc.) is independent from their circumstances, and only dependent on their effort (Roemer, 2003).

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