In Spain, educational outcomes are strongly associated with social origin. Also income inequality. And in general, all intergenerational mobility, which is one of the ways to measure equal opportunities. So Spain is far from being an optimal society in terms of intergenerational mobility, which would be one in which the parents’ profession and salary would have no influence at all when it comes to reaching something in life.
It is also what is known as a social elevator in Spain. But the truth is that it varies radically between territories. And an interesting point is that for almost all provinces, children who move to a province other than the one in which they were born end up, on average, in a higher percentile.
The numbers. The results of a study carried out by the think tank Esade Ecpol and its author Javier Soria, doctoral researcher at the Paris School of Economics, show that the Spanish social elevator is situated at an intermediate point between countries with high intergenerational mobility, such as Australia or Switzerland, and those with low mobility, such as the United States or Italy. In particular, the income of parents greatly influences the income that their children will have in the future, especially among the highest levels of the income distribution: the children of the 1% with the highest income end up with a median income of more than €20,000 compared to a family in the median of the distribution.
In addition, 1 in 10 members of the top 1% of income comes from parents who were already in the top 1%, but less than 4 in 100 come from families that started in the poorest 10%: it is therefore 24 times more easy to finish in the top 1% coming from the highest percentile compared to coming from the lowest decile. And of children raised in families from the richest quintile, 33% are still there as adults. That is to say, the study concludes that the income of the parents influences “to a great extent”.
And which territories are more mobile? In this sense, there are areas with greater intergenerational income mobility, and these are located in the north/northeast of the country, while the less mobiles they are in the south/southwest. The two most prominent provinces are Barcelona and Lleida. And then Tarragona, Madrid, Zaragoza, La Rioja, Guadalajara, Soria and Palencia. As for the provinces with less mobility are Western Andalusia –Huelva, Cádiz, Málaga and Seville– and the Canary Islands.
The province in which the children of poor families manage to rise the highest is Barcelona, where they reach the 53rd percentile on average, equivalent to an average income of 20,556 euros. This represents a difference of almost 6,000 euros with Cádiz. Provinces such as Barcelona, Lleida or Soria offer great opportunities for promotion and at the same time achieve relatively low differences between children of rich and poor families. Cadiz stands out at the other extreme. But it is a fairly common phenomenon in all the provinces of Andalusia. The two Spains?
➡️ Is income inequality related to intergenerational mobility?
The answer is yes and in the negative: the provinces with the greatest income inequality are those in which the children of the poor progress less economically pic.twitter.com/J9muBPGnys
– Javier Soria Espín (@javiersoriaesp) May 17, 2022
The Great Gatsby curve. The author detects a relationship between intergenerational mobility and income inequality at the territorial level. is what is called great gatsby curve. What does it mean? That the more inequality there is in an area (the greater the difference between rich and poor), the less intergenerational mobility there is (the less children succeed in surpassing their parents).
The fruits of migration. The following question then arises: If intergenerational mobility is marked by the province of origin, does moving to another serve to prosper? The data points to yes. Indeed, internal migration favors intergenerational mobility. The vast majority of children who leave their province of origin emigrate to richer provinces, pointing to the existence of economic reasons, which are also independent of the parents’ income: in fact, it is the children of families with less income who most they benefit from internal migration.
➡️ For almost all provinces, children who move to a different province than the one they were born in end up, on average, in a higher percentile.
➡️This positive effect of moving to another province is greater in the lower part than in the upper part of the distribution. pic.twitter.com/BRdyW4rfZT
– Javier Soria Espín (@javiersoriaesp) May 17, 2022
There is a tendency to underline: the children who move end up, on average, in a higher percentile compared to those who stay in their province. Thus, a Spain is formed with “opportunity areas”, that is, areas that promote the social ascension of the poorest, and “persistent inequality areas”, where family origin substantially influences the economic results of children. Soria explains it this way: “The data shows a clear abandonment of the south and of what we could call the emptied Spain. The main mechanism to climb the social ladder is to leave the province.”
Women. The report not only proves that the social elevator is broken, but also shows how this breakdown especially punishes poor Spain –or less rich– and women. Girls have consistently lower intergenerational mobility than boys: Girls who grew up in households with incomes at the national median finish, on average, in the 46th percentile, while children from those same families reach the 52nd percentile.
Of the sons born in the poorest quintile, 15% reach the richest quintile compared to 10% of the daughters (10%). At the same time, the percentage of children born in the richest quintile who end up being rich is higher for men (36%) than for women (30%).
Image: Unsplash