Table 2 – continued

||[|1]|[2|]_†_|[3]_‡_||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Coef.|Std. Err.|Coef.|Std. Err.|Coef.|Std. Err.|
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)<br>|0.748<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.020|0.745<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.020|0.554<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.021|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.188||0.202||0.267||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.434<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|10,653||10,653||10,635||
|**Tanzania**<br>|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)<br>|0.467<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.012|0.469<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.012|0.426<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.014|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.201||0.225||0.267||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.448<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|6,527||6,527||6,527||
|**Uganda**<br>|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)<br>|0.616<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.011|0.613<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.011|0.543<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.011|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.249||0.319||0.388||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.499<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|13,561||13,561||13,561||
|Parents education is average of mo<br>_†_ Regression include gender of chi<br>_‡_ In addition to gender this regres<br>Signifcance levels:<br>_∗_: 10%<br>_∗∗_:|ther’s and f<br>ldren.<br>sion includ<br> 5%<br>_∗∗∗_|ather’s years <br>es age, age sq<br>: 1%|of schooling.<br>uare and the|number of ch|ildren in a fa|mily.|

# **5.2 Intergenerational education mobility at the regional level**

To rank Sub-Saharan Africa among world regions, we have pooled the sample at the regional level. We find a regional correlation coefficient of 0.51, indicating that parental years of schooling account for about 51% of the inequality in children’s years of schooling. Our estimate is above the global average of 0.42 (for 42 countries) documented by Hertz et al. (2007), and is comparable with their estimates of 0.39, 0.44, 0.46 in Asia, Western Europe and the United States, and Eastern Europe, respectively. SubSaharan Africa has lower estimated intergenerational educational persistence (ˆ _ρ_ ) than Latin America. Overall, mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa is lower than Europe and the United States and Eastern Europe and higher than Latin America. Our estimate of intergenerational correlation (ˆ _ρ_ ) is also higher than the African average of 0.36 estimated by Hertz et al. (2007). Therefore, using correlation coefficient of parental background explains a significantly higher share of the variation in the educational attainment of children in Sub-Saharan Africa than before.<sup>7</sup> Similarly, we estimate an intergenerational elasticity of 0.66 for Sub-Saharan Africa, indicating that additional years of parental schooling, on average, increases children’s years schooling by 0.66. This estimate is higher than the estimates of Hertz et al. (2007) 0.52 in Western Europe and United States and 0.38 in Eastern bloc Europe, and is lower than the intergenerational elasticity of 0.83 in Latin America and 0.69 in Asia (see table 3). The intergenerational elasticity estimate of the current study is lower than the estimates of Hertz et al. (2007) (0.8) for four African countries (Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa). Our estimates of the two measures paint a picture that is consistent with previous estimates on developing countries. While intergenerational elasticity demonstrates that an extra year of parental schooling adds fewer years of schooling to children’s education now than before, the regional correlation coefficient estimate is higher than previous estimates of Hertz et al. (2007), thereby, telling a bleaker story of mobility in the region. This apparent contradiction can be explained based on Eq.2: two countries can have the same intergenerational elasticity estimates, but the correlation coefficient can be different if the educational inequality in the generation of the parents and children varies over time, for instance because of, education policy changes affecting children’s generation (see section 5.3).

As discussed in section 3, Eq.5, the square of intergenerational correlation provides an estimate of the share of the total variance in schooling that can be explained by parental years of schooling alone. We estimate that parents education alone can explain 31% of variations in the years of schooling of daughters and 21% of sons in the region. This estimate is higher than the available estimates for developed countries

> 7Hertz et al. (2007) used older surveys from the Arab Republic of Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa and study intergenerational mobility between 1925 and 1978.

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