Still Looking for The Land of Opportunity: Regional Differences in Social Mobility in Mexico

Abstract

The present study documents the heterogeneity of intergenerational mobility among Mexico's 32 federative entities. Given the lack of information pertaining to regional disaggregation, two data sources that together cover the required information and representativeness were matched: the esru Survey of Social Mobility in Mexico 2011 (emovi-2011) and the National Nutrition and Health Survey 2012 (ensanut-2012). Mobility is measured with reference to a wealth index that is calculated using the Multiple Correspondence Analysis (mca) method. The observed heterogeneity was found to be consistent with recent studies of the USA by Chetty et al. (2015). Such heterogeneity points to the existence of differences in opportunity among people in Mexico, not only at an urban-rural level, but also at the regional one. This result indicates the need for future surveys to collect primary information, in order to ensure the possibility of regionally disaggregating social mobility measures.

Keywords

• social mobility
• wealth index
• Mexico
• regional disaggregation