The causes and consequences of the intergenerational persistence of inequality
are a topic of great interest among various fields in economics. However,
until now, issues of data availability have restricted a broader and cross-
national perspective on the topic. Based on rich sets of harmonized household
survey data, we contribute to filling this gap computing time series for
several indexes of relative and absolute intergenerational education mobility
for 18 Latin American countries over 50 years, and making them publicly
available. We find that intergenerational mobility has been rising in Latin
America, on average. This pattern seems to be driven by the high upward
mobility of children from low-educated families; at the same time, there is
substantial immobility at the top of the distribution. Significant cross-
country differences are observed and are associated with income inequality,
poverty, economic growth, public educational expenditures and assortative
mating