# **2 Related literature**

Intergenerational social mobility refers to the ability of children to climb higher than their parents on the socio economic status ladder when they become adults. Although the literature has widely focused on income, several social outcomes such as education, social class, health, or occupation can be used to study intergenerational mobility in a society (Bhalotra and Rawlings, 2011; Causa and Johansson, 2011; Ferreira et al., 2012; Bauer and Riphahn, 2007). Indeed, education is viewed as the main shaper of all other adulthood opportunities (Stiglitz, 2012). The literature on intergenerational mobility in education, occupation, and income is broad and extensive in developed countries. Black and Devereux (2011) update the previous works of Solon (1992, 1999) and present a survey of the literature, along with the methodological challenges of the existing evidence in developed economies. Recent contributions on education mobility in developed countries include Ranasinghe (2015), Johnston et al. (2014), Checchi et al. (2013), and Cobb-Clark and Nguyen (2010). Hertz et al. (2007) extend the analysis of intergenerational educational mobility to 42 countries, including 19 developing countries, among which three are Sub-Saharan African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa), and present trends over 50 years. They find that the intergenerational regression coefficient has fallen over time, implying a high degree of intergenerational education mobility, but the correlation in educational attainment between children and their parents’ remained unchanged over the period. They also document considerable regional differences, with Nordic and Latin American countries displaying the highest and the lowest intergenerational education mobility, respectively. Daude and Robano (2015) study education mobility in 18 Latin American countries and confirm the finding of Hertz et al. (2007). Hnatkovska et al. (2013) study education and occupation mobility in India by caste. They conclude that structural changes in India have coincided with a breaking down of caste-based barriers to socioeconomic mobility. Azam and Bhatt (2015) examine the intergenerational transmission of education in India and report a decline in educational persistence between fathers and sons over the last 45 years. In contrast, Emran and Shilpi (2015) find that India shows greater intergenerational education persistence than Latin America and that educational mobility remained unchanged between 1991 and 2006.

With the exception of South Africa, studies on the intergenerational transmission of education in Africa are almost nonexistent.<sup>4</sup> Some important early contributions on South Africa include Thomas (1996), Lam (1999), Case and Deaton (1999), Nimubona and Vencatachellum (2007), and Girdwood and Leibbrandt (2009). Overall, the studies find that parental education determines education outcomes among children and that there is substantial education persistence in the country, especially among black South Africans. Recent studies (Branson et al., 2012; Kwenda et al., 2015) document a decrease in intergenerational transmission of education over the last five decades in the country. To the best of our knowledge, the only cross-country study on intergenerational education mobility that includes other African countries is Hertz et al. (2007). Using data from Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa, the authors present evidence of lower educational persistence in African countries compared with Latin American countries. However, the smaller educational persistence rate in educational attainments between children and parents in these countries is not necessarily indicative of greater mobility. Rather, parental education dispersion was limited because of the low educational level in the population during their study period.

The evidence on education mobility across generations by sex is mixed. Lam (1999) finds that the effect of a mother’s education on a child’s education is no different relative to that of a father in South Africa. In contrast, Kwenda et al. (2015), Thomas (1996), and Branson et al. (2012) on South Africa, Ranasinghe (2015) and Crook (1995) on Australia, and Bj ̈orklund et al. (2006) on Sweden present empirical evidence that the schooling of mothers has a bigger effect on children’s educational attainment than that of fathers, while Girdwood and Leibbrandt (2009), Plug (2004), and Behrman and Rosenzweig (2005) find the paternal effect to be strong in the United States. The current study aims to extend the evidence for on nine Sub-Saharan African countries with recent data and provide an in-depth analysis of intergenerational education mobility over the long term. The study therefore complements the growing literature on international comparisons of intergenerational education mobility and fills the hitherto overlooked aspect of intergenerational mobility in developing countries particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

# **3 Analytical framework**

There are several theoretical arguments on how parental educational background affects children’s education. Educational decisions on children are determined by parental preference and credit constraints

> 4To the best of our knowledge, Hertz et al. (2007) are the only exception, their sample includes three Sub-Saharan African countries. This study also updates the data on Ghana using recent survey data.

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