# **1 Introduction**

Since the mid-1990s, the resurgence of growth has been remarkable in Sub-Sharan Africa. For instance, between 2000 and 2012, the region experienced a 3 percent per capita annual growth rate in Gross Domestic Product (Thorbecke, 2013). Recent evidence indicates that, while the observed growth has led to considerable poverty reduction, it has been accompanied by a rise in inequality in a number of countries, including Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia (Fosu, 2015). Accordingly, there is growing concern that the benefits of economic growth are not shared broadly. For policy making, it is important to understand whether the increase in inequality is an outcome of an economic structure that rewards hard work and risk taking, or whether it is a reflection of the existence of inequality of opportunity within society. The rise in inequality becomes a policy concern if it is an outcome of inequality of opportunity among individuals with different initial circumstances; for example children from poor families with ability and talent are unable to move beyond the position of their parents on the economic ladder through their own effort and choices (Rawls, 1971). Intergenerational persistence in socioeconomic status is the main mechanism through which inequality of opportunity persist in a society. For example, social mobility may differ based on gender, race, ethnicity, or region, suggesting differential access to opportunity across groups within a society. Equality of opportunity has come to be a key condition if a society is to achieve an acceptable level of equity: in its strongest form, equality of opportunity is a more relevant aspect of policy in a society than of inequalities of outcomes (Kanbur and Wagstaff, 2015; Rama et al., 2015). Greater inequality of opportunity may result in greater inequality in a society and affect public attitudes toward other social objectives such as growth and poverty reduction (Atkinson, 1980; Piketty, 1995; Corak, 2013). Because of this, the extent to which socioeconomic outcomes are transmitted from one generation to the next has long been of interest among development economists and policy makers.

Although understanding intergenerational mobility is important for policy, economic analysis of intergenerational mobility in developing countries is only in its infancy because of lack of appropriate data. In particular, intergenerational mobility studies on Sub-Saharan Africa are scarce.<sup>1</sup> The current study aims to fill this gap by taking advantage of recent nationally representative data that provide information on the social origin of adult individuals in nine Sub-Saharan Africa countries. We use education as an indicator of economic status. Using education as an indicator of economic status has four main advantages. First, the literature in both developed and developing countries identifies education as an important driver of labor market participation and, hence, income, more years of schooling is usually associated with higher income (see Chevalier et al., 2003; Blanden et al., 2005; Black and Devereux, 2011). Understanding the trends, levels and patterns of the persistence of the education attainment across generations therefore sheds light on overall mobility in economic status in a society. Second, schooling is an outcome on which it seems reasonable to assume respondents can reliably report on their parents. Third, data restrictions, especially in developing countries, are much less stringent; retrospective information on parents’ education has been more widely available recently than information on parental incomes or occupations. Finally, using income to proxy socioeconomic outcomes in developing countries is found to be problematic. There is a serious concern about persistence of measurement errors in consumption and income data from developing countries (see Deaton, 1997; Glewwe, 2005; Lee, 2009 for detailed discussion). Education is also considered a vital policy instrument in the creation of equal access to economic opportunity, leading to higher social mobility and economic progress (Bowles, 1972; Becker and Tomes, 1979; Piketty, 1995; Hertz et al., 2007; Corak, 2013; Reeves, 2014). Furthermore, the region serves as an excellent case study for intergenerational education mobility. It endorsed the United Nations goal of Education for All agreed in Dakar in 2000, a commitment to provide quality basic education for all children and adults by 2015. Accordingly, many countries in the region undertook major reforms in education systems, including the abolition of school fees (Thakur, 1991; Tomasevski, 2006). Thus, gauging how such policy changes induce intergenerational mobility has important policy implications.

Drawing on nationally representative survey data, the study analyzes the trends, levels, and patterns of intergenerational im(mobility) in educational attainment in the Comoros, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda over 50 years, with a special focus on gender differences. The paper contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, the study extends the existing evidence by creating comparable recent estimates for nine Sub-Saharan African countries so that we may begin to draw conclusions about the inclusiveness of the recent investment in education in the sampled countries. Using two widely applied measures of intergenerational persistence, we provide persistence estimates for 10 successive five-year birth cohorts at the aggregate and gender levels in each

> 1South Africa is the exceptional country in the region where there exists a reasonable literature on intergenerational transmission of economic status.

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