This structural model includes five latent variables (provider’s cognitive abilities, as well as youth’s social origin, cognitive abilities, education and first occupation) and a manifest dependent variable (youth’s occupational attainment). Each latent variable is constructed from the manifest variables based on a confirmatory factor analysis (Brown, 2015). Each latent variable and the model’s response variable are described below. Appendix E will provide more details on the construction of latent variables (and on the manifest variables), as well as the calculation of the composite reliability  .

 The _social origin_ is constructed from the manifest variables, such as the ISEI of the provider’s occupation, the schooling of the father and the mother when the youth was 14 years old and an index of assets and services in the household in 1997. The composite reliability is  = 0.60.

 The _youth’s and provider’s cognitive abilities_ are measured with manifest variables created by two cognitive tests that are affected by education: 1) Raven’s progressive matrices (Alderton and Larson, 1990; Bilker, et. al., 2012), that are used to measure inductive reasoning and are considered predictors of academic and labor performance, and 2) digit span, which is a test frequently used to measure short-term memory and attention span (Ostrosky-Solís and Lozano, 2006). The measurements of both youths and their providers were performed using data from 2017. Nonetheless, both are granted a place in the model preceding the current occupational attainment. This is because the cognitive abilities are essentially developed during childhood and are determined to a large extent by family socioeconomic status (Evans and Schamberg, 2009; Hackman, et. al., 2015). Therefore, it assumes that the measurements performed on youths reflect their cognitive state prior to the current labor insertion and the ones performed on the providers may closely reflect their abilities when the youths were 14 years old. The composite reliability is  = 0.46 and 0.52 for youths and their providers, respectively.

 The latent variable, _youth’s education,_ is measured based on four manifest variables: youth’s years of schooling and three variables that combine having attended a grade of the educational level and the quality of the school the youth attended at the secondary, high-school and superior levels. The inclusion of the variables for educational attainment and school quality acknowledge that education should not only be conceived exclusively as a meritocratic factor. A measurement that seeks to approximate the role of education as a mediator between the origin and the social destination is proposed, which may favor (or not) greater equality of opportunity. The composite reliability is  = 0.92.

 The _youth’s first occupation_ is measured with the age of their first occupation and the ISEI of that first occupation. The composite reliability is  = 0.45.

 The dependent variable is the _youth’s occupational attainment_ and is measured through the ISEI of the youth’s current occupation.

The model established a time sequence that begins with the two latent variables that represent the ascribed factors linked to the youths’ socioeconomic origin: their social origin and their provider’s cognitive abilities. Based on these initial variables, the stratification process may 30