Absolute and relative intergenerational educational mobility in Mexico: Differences by sex and birth cohorts from 1952 to 1991

The purpose of this article is to analyze the absolute and relative opportunities of intergenerational educational mobility by sex and birth cohorts in Mexico. The study uses current data from the intergenerational social mobility module of the National Statistics Institute (INEGI) of Mexico for 2016. The methodological approach was based on social mobility rates and three-way loglinear models to explore changes in barriers to educational mobility. The picture emerging from these findings depicts a society that maintained high rates of structural educational mobility, with a prevalence of upward mobility for both men and women over time. Nevertheless, when controlling for structural mobility, it is observed that barriers to mobility change significantly for men and women over time. For women, the barriers increase at the extremes of the educational distribution. For men, barriers decrease in the lower part of the educational distribution and increase in access to upper secondary and higher education. The article concludes with a discussion of future avenues of research for educational mobility studies in Mexico.