Reconstructing Prospective Intergenerational Educational Mobility in 12 Countries

In this article, we reconstruct prospective intergenerational educational mobil ity and explore fer til ity's role in this pro cess for women born between 1925 and 1950 in 12 Euro pean countries. We do so by com bin ing high-qual ity ret ro spec tive data (Generations and Gender Survey) and low-require ment pro spec tive datasets using an infer en tial method devel oped and advanced in prior research. Our anal y sis shows that the negative educational fertility gradient partly compensates for the inequality in pro spec tive mobil ity rates between lower and higher edu cated women and is most pronounced in high-inequal ity con texts. However, fer til ity's role is small and declin ing and thus does not account for much of the differ ences in mobil ity rates between countries. We also explore the rel a tive impor tance of sibship size effects in medi at ing the effect of fer til ity gra di ent, find ing it neg li gi ble. Finally, we explore the cor re spon dence between pro spective and retrospective estimates in the reconstruction of prospective mobility rates and sug gest why the for mer, when avail able, must be pre ferred.