where ������ is the standard deviation of the years of school of the children and ������� is the standard deviation of the years of schooling of the parent. This means that the regression coefficient is a function of the correlation coefficient between the two vectors and the ratio of the standard deviations. In words, unlike �, the correlation measure conditions for or purges the effect of the changes in the dispersion of the years of education which tends to increase with the mean years of schooling in the initial periods of expansion of education and decline later. Most studies of intergenerational educational persistence have noted that the �� have declined for most countries but the �s have largely remained unchanged.

How does the persistence measure based on the Altham statistic that we use map into this discussion? Since we work with transition matrices between parent-child educational attainment levels and since the mobility measure obtained is completely independent of the marginal distribution of education of the parent, the statistic we report is analogous to the correlation coefficient measure of relative mobility. This is not “tainted” at all by the possible changes in the educational attainment levels across the two generations, including due to any changes in education policies and systems during the period.<sup>18</sup> In other words, the rise in Altham statistic for the younger cohorts across all three countries in the sub-region implies a rise in the conditional persistence.

Next, we examine the relationship between this measure of intergenerational persistence and several markers of perceptions and attitudes across the entire Europe and Central Asia region and attempt to see if the countries in the South Caucasus stand out in in particular way. First, in terms of broad bivariate correlations across the ECA region, higher intergenerational mobility appears to be positively correlated with favorable assessment of current economic situation, life satisfaction, favorable assessment of overall well-being relative to parents, and favorable outlook for the future for children. To the extent that higher mobility – or lower persistence of parental privilege – signals a fairer society in which the observed inequalities in market outcomes are due to exerted effort or luck (as opposed to birth circumstances), it would be associated with a lower preference for redistribution (Alesina and Angeletos 2005). On the other hand, perceived mobility may be different from actual experienced mobility. Alesina et al (2017) show that Americans are more optimistic about intergenerational mobility in comparison to Europeans and too optimistic also relative to actual mobility. But even conditional on actual mobility, if perceived mobility is low, then the preferences for redistribution may be high.

> 18 This is similar to a distinction made in sociology between “exchange mobility” and “structural mobility”. Exchange mobility is closest to the origin-independence idea that motivates our work here and posits that individuals in society exchange social positions or are shuffled through the social hierarchy based on talent or merit. Structural mobility on the other hand posits that mobility happens because of the structural changes in society that leads to the expansion of better opportunities. This could be in the form of more jobs in in occupations with higher prestige and remuneration or expansion of the availability and access to schools, social changes that make it easier for certain sub-groups of the population to attain higher education levels and so on. The Altham measure has characteristics that make is more similar to exchange mobility.

32