A cross-country analysis of the association between educational mobility and income inequality

Sammanfattning: The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility and income inequality. Previous research suggests that this relationship is expected to be positive, i.e. high income inequality is associated with low intergenerational educational mobility. To estimate the association between the two specified variables data on educational mobility is taken from a previous study and data on the income inequality measure, the Gini coefficient is taken from the World Bank. A weighted least square regression shows that 0.10 increase in the Gini coefficient leads to a 0.135 increase in the measure of educational mobility. Moreover, one underlying mechanism for this certain linkage is inspected. Pearson correlation between public spending on education as a percent of GDP and educational mobility show a rather strong negative association suggesting that higher spending on education is related to higher educational mobility.