Many African countries are still in the earlier stages of structural transformation, populated by households with low education and working in agriculture. This project examines intergenerational mobility in educational attainments and occupations in Africa.
The study collects data for many geographical locations across many of those African countries and studies whether and how the characteristics of the different locations shape the education and labour market outcomes of children growing up in those regions. Then the study constructs a quantitative model to examine whether school quality heterogeneity and barriers to regional mobility can account for labour misallocations and missing education opportunities and then explores the aggregate and distributional gains of policies aimed at improving the quality and access to the countries' different labour markets and education institutions. this study proposes to homogenise data for many parent-children pairs in African countries from IPUMS-I and the World Bank’s LSMS with other regional and national data. First, the study characterises the variation across and within countries on upward international mobility in education and occupations. Second, it proposes a simple identification strategy to examine causality. Third, it proposes an econometric model to relate the locations' endogenous and exogenous characteristics to the observed patterns in intergenerational mobility. Fourth, it sketches a tractable quantitative model that replicates the observed allocation of the population, earnings, housing costs as well as educational and occupational mobility as a general equilibrium of the model. Finally, it proposes a number of counterfactual exercises aiming at concrete policies that foster social mobility and welfare of these African countries and can contribute to their structural transformation and ascension to modern economic growth.
