Intergenerational Educational and Occupational Mobility in Spain Does Gender Matter

British Journal of Sociology of Education
ISSN: 0142-5692 (Print) 1465-3346 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbse20
Intergenerational educational and occupational

mobility in Spain: does gender matter?
Laura De Pablos Escobar & María Gil Izquierdo
To cite this article: Laura De Pablos Escobar & María Gil Izquierdo (2014): Intergenerational
educational and occupational mobility in Spain: does gender matter?, British Journal of
Sociology of Education, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2014.969397
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.969397
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British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.969397
Intergenerational educational and occupational mobility in Spain:

does gender matter?
Laura De Pablos Escobara* and María Gil Izquierdob
a
Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Complutense de
Madrid, Madrid, Spain; bFacultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
(Received 7 September 2013; final version received 22 September 2014)
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 22:58 21 March 2016
This paper explores the changes in intergenerational mobility seen in

Spain during the last century. It examines educational and occupational
mobility, paying particular attention to the existence of a differentiated
gender effect. The magnitude of the historical changes that have taken
place in Spain during the twentieth century and the scarcity of studies
in this field increase the value of this paper. More specifically, the paper
seeks to describe how the situation has changed with the social–
economic and education policy developments in democratic Spain,
especially with regards to women. The main results show that while
educational mobility has improved, there has been no such significant
change in occupational mobility.
Keywords: intergenerational mobility; gender; education; occupation
JEL classifications: J62, I21, J79
1. Introduction
In recent years, a growing amount of research analysing mobility from dif-
ferent perspectives has been conducted. The predominant approaches have
been sociological and economic, the latter focusing mainly on income
mobility. Very little work has been carried out on occupational or educa-
tional mobility in Spain; the lack of longitudinal data having so far been an
important limitation to the empirical analysis of mobility. This obstacle has
now been overcome thanks to the publication of a microdata survey at the
European level (European Survey on Income and Living Conditions
[EU-SILC]), which provides the information required to measure the inter-
generational transmission of living conditions from parents to their children.
This paper seeks to examine both educational and occupational mobility,
paying particular attention to the existence of a differentiated gender effect.
*Corresponding author. Email: lpablos@ccee.ucm.es

© 2014 Taylor & Francis
2 L. De Pablos Escobar and M. Gil Izquierdo
The profound historical and political changes that Spain has experienced
over the last few decades have had a significant impact both on the educa-
tional system and on the labour market, hence why the results have been
disaggregated to account for different generations. In addition to this, two
specific gender dimensions are introduced: on the one hand, we analyse
whether mobility in educational and occupational categories is different for
men and women; whilst, on the other, we look at whether there is a differ-
ence in the transmission of educational and occupational categories from
fathers and mothers to sons and daughters. As Di Paolo, Raymond, and
Calero (2010) argue, although the education of both parents is usually
considered as a single variable in mobility analyses, it seems clear that a
father’s contribution of education or occupation to mobility is not necessarily
the same as a mother’s.
The structure of this paper is as follows: after this introduction, we pro-

vide a literature review of some of the most relevant works on intergenera-
tional mobility along with their main conclusions. The third section
addresses the core concepts later applied and the fourth section defines the
methodology used, including data sources and the specific methodological
decisions taken in this paper. Our main findings are detailed in the fifth
section, and lastly our conclusions are presented in the final section.
2. Literature review
Many interesting references to the specific subject of this paper – intergener-
ational occupational and educational mobility, with or without a gender
approach and from a sociological perspective – can be cited from several
international research papers.
With regards to educational mobility, Checchi, Ichino, and Rustichini
(1999), Behrman, Gaviria, and Székely (2001) and Comi (2003) have made
general assumptions for several countries, finding evidence for a significant
degree of educational immobility. Aydemir, Chen, and Corak (2008) analyse
educational mobility from a gender perspective in Canada and their conclu-
sions suggest a high level of intergenerational determinism for both men
and women, albeit considerably lower for women. Meanwhile, Checchi and
Flabbi (2007) carry out the same analysis for Germany and Italy but con-
clude that mobility is generally higher for women, opposite findings to the
situation in Canada. In Spain, few studies have been carried out for inter-
generational educational mobility, mainly due to the lack of longitudinal
data, especially in so far as education is concerned. However, there are
some studies of note. Sánchez (2004) revealed a high level of intergenera-
tional determinism in education, finding a strong correlation between chil-
dren’s educational category and their parents’ at both ends of the
educational hierarchy. Calero et al. (2007) found a positive correlation
between a child’s number of years of schooling and their parents’ level of
British Journal of Sociology of Education 3
education, especially the mother’s. These results were corroborated by Gil,

de Pablos, and Martínez (2010) and Mediavilla and Calero (2010). Lastly,
Di Paolo, Raymond, and Calero (2010) use a synthetic mobility index to
study intergenerational educational mobility in several European Union
countries. Their main findings suggest that family characteristics account for
an important part of the statistical association between parental education
and children’s schooling.
In contrast, a gender perspective in intergenerational occupational mobility
has hardly been approached. Years ago, some authors such as Hayet (1987,
1990) and Rosenfeld (1978) researched this issue in terms of Australia and
Ireland and for American women, respectively. These authors considered a
mother’s occupation to be a baseline, and thus analysed a mother and father’s
contribution to their daughter’s occupational outcome. Fortin and Lefebvre
(1998) found the same to be true when using the ‘occupation of the individ-
ual’ as an instrumental variable. More recently, for the Canadian case, Corak
and Piraino (2010) concluded that no less than 40% of young Canadian
women have the same occupational category as their parents. This correlation
is even higher when the parents have good jobs or are self-employed. Ray
and Majumder (2011) analyse occupational and educational mobility in India,
raising a question that is especially of interest for us in this paper: although
the educational status of the population is generally much better now than it
was years ago, this is not properly reflected in women’s occupational catego-
ries. This result suggests it is the labour market itself that shows a notable
reluctance to assume this increase in the population’s level of education and
to show a high level of correlation between the occupational categories of
parents, especially for women.
Few studies have focused on the sociological perspective of the Spanish
case. The paper by Carabaña (1999) is probably the most renowned in this
field. His results show that over time, while a father’s professional status
becomes less decisive in explaining his son’s occupation, his level of educa-
tion becomes a more important factor. Moreover, he concludes that, on aver-
age, individuals in Spain are entering the labour market at increasingly
better positions. Conversely, a mother’s education and occupation seem to
only determine her son’s professional status to a very small extent. From a
gender perspective, the conclusion is that a father’s education and occupa-
tion has more of an influence on the professional status of his children than
a mother’s does. Celorio and Marín (2012) recently used figures from the
Sociological Research Centre to examine cohorts prior to 2006, and dating
back 39 years. Following an exhaustive study, the main conclusions showed
that middle classes have maintained a certain degree of immobility, whilst
their children are either headed for ascending or descending mobility. At
present, education is a determining factor for class, although the latter is still
influenced by the class origin, with the upper spheres of society experienc-
ing more mobility. Finally, Marqués and Herrera-Usagre (2010) use the
EU-SILC 2005 to study relative social intergenerational mobility. Their

main findings show that the rates of social fluidity remain invariant during
this period and that the patterns of core social fluidity for European coun-
tries closely match the Spanish case. Nevertheless, this mobility regime has
certain particularities resulting from the characteristics of Spain’s social and
economic structure.
3. Concepts
In this section we define several concepts of mobility that we will employ at a
later stage. Firstly, we make reference to social mobility in the broad sense
and understood as the movement of individuals between different social clas-
ses (Giner, Lamo de Espinosa, and Torres 2006). Of the many types of mobil-
ity, this paper measures intergenerational mobility, a variable that reflects the
social changes experienced by children in relation to their parents’ situation.
In this case, we measure sociological mobility using occupational structure as
a proxy, an individual’s occupation being considered one of the major factors
in determining an individual’s social class, social status and income. In addi-
tion, we also look at educational mobility, this being understood as the degree
to which education is passed on from parents to their children given the vital
role it plays in both determining social position and leading to changes in
these social positions. We carry out this analysis by measuring the absolute
social mobility (Martínez and Marín 2012) which measures the overall
changes in the social classes of the children studied compared with their par-
ents. Some of this absolute mobility is induced by the sector and occupational
changes that occur throughout a historical cycle, as will be shown at a later
stage. Lastly, our paper adds the gender perspective. It examines whether there
are any major differences, and if so to what degree, in the results seen for men
and women, which for the period included in the study are likely to be very
significant. Moreover, the relationship that parents have with their children is
also taken into account; that is to say, the different weighting that mothers and
fathers have on their children’s mobility.
4. Methods
The above-mentioned literature suggests using some of the following methods
and indicators to estimate intergenerational, occupational and educational
mobility:
Correlation indices between educational or occupational categories of

parents and children.
Different kinds of econometric regressions that seek to measure
whether (and to what extent) the educational or occupational status of
children depends on their parents’.
Transition matrices provide a detailed comparison between the educa-

tional and occupational status of parents and their children.
Mobility indices that summarise in a single value all the information
in the transition matrices. They can also represent a more complex
set of information derived from inequality indices or econometric
estimations.
In this paper, a mix of several methods and indicators are used, seeking
to measure the different aspects of intergenerational mobility. In addition,
and in order to assess potential gender-based differences, all indicators are
calculated separately for men and women and mothers and fathers whenever
possible.
Correlation indices measure the significant or insignificant relationship
between the ordinal classifications of the different categories of two given

categorical variables. As indicators of mobility, they can be interpreted as
follows: the higher the value of the index, the greater the educational or
occupational inelasticity of mobility. In this paper, we use Spearman’s corre-
lation index and we also calculate the level of significance associated with
each value of the index.
The simplicity of correlation indices is an important advantage. How-
ever, this can also be a disadvantage since they do not provide detailed
information about certain aspects of mobility. This disadvantage can be
overcome, to some extent, by using transition matrices. They are square
matrices in which each aij element represents, in their simplest version, a
set of individuals (sons and daughters) with a certain characteristic j (educa-
tional or occupational status) and whose parents present the specific charac-
teristic i. The value of each aij element is represented as a percentage of the
total value of every category in rows. The individuals with the same level
of education or occupation as their parents are in the main diagonal of the
matrix. Individuals with a lower level of education or occupation than their
parents are placed below the main diagonal, the opposite for those placed
above.
Mobility indices are based on the transition matrices. Several indicators
are derived from the transition matrices: upward mobility, calculated as the
sum of all the values above the main diagonal; downward mobility, calcu-
lated by adding the values below the main diagonal; and immobility, calcu-
lated by adding the values in the main diagonal. Each of these indicators
provides an idea of the proportion of sons and daughters whose status has
improved, worsened or been maintained in relation to their parents’ respec-
tively. Based on these results, the immobility index can be calculated as
immobility divided by the sum of all values in the matrix, thus giving the
relative immobility. Finally, if upward mobility is divided by downward
mobility we obtain the upward/downward mobility index. Any index value
above one means that upward mobility is higher than downward mobility;
for example, that individuals generally have a better educational or occupa-

tional status than their parents, and therefore that the society as a whole is
more mobile.
As for regression techniques,1 in short they enable us to assess whether
there is a relation of causality between parents’ and their children’s educa-
tional or occupational status. Given that one of the goals of this paper is to
study the impact of mobility on the labour market, we limit the use of
regression techniques to a single probit-type probabilistic model that links
the occupational category of sons and daughters (dependent variable) with
the occupational and educational status of the father and the mother
(independent variables).
4.1. Data and methodological decisions

The data source used in this paper is the EU-SILC (Eurostat 2006), a micro-
data survey – published in Spain by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística
(Spanish National Institute of Statistics) – which provides a vast amount of
information regarding the living conditions of household members over the
age of 16. In 2005, for the first time, this survey included a Module on
Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty, a section providing the data
needed in order to apply the methodology of mobility analysis described in
the previous section. In this module, individuals aged between 25 and 66
were asked different questions about their parents, thus portraying the inter-
generational evolution of certain socio-economic conditions. Our investiga-
tion therefore concerns a subset of individuals (those aged 25–66) within
the global sample of the Survey.
Taking advantage of the information provided by this module, and for the
purposes of this paper, it was decided to split the population under study into
three different age cohorts: the first generation, comprising individuals born
before 1939; the second generation, formed by those born between 1939 and
1965; and the third generation, including those born after 1965 (and before
1980, as the sample subset only includes individuals over 25). The main rea-
son for selecting these specific age cohorts was to account for the historical
evolution of the Spanish education system over such a long period of time.
This division allows, to a certain extent, the impact of educational reforms
and historical events on socio-economic conditions to be appreciated. The
first age cohort, which will be referred to as the ‘oldest generation’ or ‘first
generation’, was born before the Civil War and was educated under the so-
called Moyano Law, adopted in 1857. The second age cohort, which we will
call the ‘middle generation’ or ‘second generation’, was also educated under
the previously mentioned Moyano Law, albeit a slightly modified version,
but historically belongs to the post-war period. Finally, the last age cohort,
the ‘third generation’ or ‘youngest generation’, was educated in a different
system, established by the De Villar Palasí Law also known as the General
Education Law adopted in 1970. This Law sought to achieve a universal

education for everyone in Spain and represented a huge breakthrough
compared with the previous legal framework.
In terms of occupational structure in Spain, Figures 1 and 2 detail the
significant change seen over the last century (similar to what has been seen
in other European countries, although differing in the timing), going from a
highly agricultural society at the start of the twentieth century (when over
60% of workers were employed in this sector) to one that as of the 1940s
had an industrial, construction and services sector. This had implications on
absolute mobility, given that many of the changes seen in occupation will
have been caused by the population’s distribution by sectors. Moreover, in
Spain the industrial sector’s weighting remained at 40% for men until the
turn of the twenty-first century given the importance of the construction
sector in the country. The situation is rather different for women given that
traditionally they have a much higher participation in the services sector
than men. In fact, the number of women employed in this sector rose signif-
icantly as of the 1960s, reaching 80% in the year 2000.
An important methodological decision that needs to be made before cal-
culating several indicators of mobility is the re-adjustment of some of the
variables, especially those referring to educational and occupational catego-
ries. In terms of education, the individuals in the sample were asked to state
the highest level of education that both they and their parents had com-
pleted. However, it must be pointed out that there was a small difference
between the answers available for parents and those available for children.
For children the options were ‘primary education’, ‘lower secondary educa-
tion’, ‘upper secondary education’, ‘vocational training’ and ‘higher educa-
tion’, while parents had an additional category of ‘lower than primary
education’. This distinction is indeed interesting, since most Spanish people
Figure 1. Distribution of the active population (%) in Spain by sector, males,

1900–2000.
Source: Authors, based on Fundación BBVA (2005).
Figure 2. Distribution of the active population (%) in Spain by sector, females,

1900–2000.
Source: Authors, based on Fundación BBVA (2005).
(especially women) born before 1939 were illiterate and/or had not even
completed primary education, as will be seen later on. As the variable needs
to have the same categories for parents and children to calculate some
mobility indicators, it was decided to re-code the educational categories of
parents, regrouping ‘primary education’ and ‘lower than primary education’.
As for the occupational categories, the EU-SILC classifies occupations
according to the International Standard Classification of Occupations
(ISCO-88). However, this classification is too detailed for the calculation of
the indicators presented in this paper. Even if only the first level of the clas-
sification is used (10 large groups of occupations), it is still too broad
because there are many categories with no individuals in them, especially
after disaggregating by gender and by generation. Hence, it was decided to
regroup all the occupational categories into five: unskilled workers; skilled
agricultural, fishery and craft workers, machine operators and assemblers;
service workers and shop and market sales workers; technicians, associate
professionals, and clerks; and senior officials, managers, technicians and
professionals. This classification allows a more robust explanation of mobil-
ity, at the cost of losing a greater level of detail.
5. Results and discussion

In this section we present the main results of our research. Firstly, we pro-
vide an overview of the changes in the Spanish stock of education and
occupation (e.g. the level of these variables at a given time) through
descriptive statistics. We then comment on the correlation coefficients, tran-
sition matrices and mobility indices to deepen our understanding of the
intergenerational transmission of educational and occupational categories.
Table 1 presents the distribution of the stock of education and occupa-

tion of the Spanish population, with disaggregated data for the three genera-
tions under study as well as for men and women.
The most interesting results are summarised in the following:
There has been a sharp increase in the Spanish population’s stock of

education over the past century: whilst 80% of the oldest generation
has only primary education or below, 85% of the youngest generation
has achieved qualifications at least in lower secondary education.
Moreover, a large proportion of this generation has higher education
qualifications (over 38%).2
From a gender perspective, there have been highly notable changes
over the last century. In the oldest generation over 90% of women had
a category of primary education or below, whilst in the second genera-

tion the proportion of women with the category primary education or
Table 1. Stock of education and occupation in Spain across three generations,

disaggregated by gender.
Third Second First
generation generation generation
(%) (%) (%)
Women Men Women Men Women Men
Education
Lower than primary 0 0 0 0 37.3 29.9
Primary 13.1 15.7 42.5 36.0 54.0 54.0
Lower secondary 19.6 23.1 22.6 21.1 3.0 3.8
Upper secondary 22.3 24.3 16.4 18.6 2.8 4.5
Vocational training 3.0 2.7 1.0 1.4 0.3 0.5
Higher 42.0 34.3 17.5 23.0 2.7 7.5
Occupations
Business administration 2.69 5.28 4.41 8.79 1.32 7.66
Senior officials, managers and 14.79 11.08 9.74 8.61 1.78 3.49
professionals
Technicians and associate 11.31 11.86 7.68 9.53 0.80 4.70
professionals
Clerks 21.77 6.53 13.68 7.08 1.64 4.43
Service workers and shop and 22.57 10.99 20.72 8.96 6.53 6.64
market sales workers
Skilled agricultural and fishery 1.47 3.26 3.18 5.86 7.00 19.29
workers
Craft and related trades workers 5.76 25.14 9.70 24.39 7.03 21.82
Plant and machine operators and 1.93 10.84 2.72 12.50 0.74 8.87
assemblers
Elementary occupations 17.71 15.01 28.16 14.28 73.15 23.10
Source: Authors, based on EU-SILC 2005.
below decreases to 42.5% and the share of women reaching higher

education increases to 17.5%. In the youngest generation, the share of
women completing higher education is particularly high (42%) and
much higher than that for men (34.3%).3
With regards to the stock of occupation and its evolution, the results
show a large share of the oldest generation working in jobs requiring
low qualifications. The middle generation’s occupational profile is
markedly different, as a result of the important historical events of
those times (end of the Civil War and beginning of the Dictatorship)
and of the changes seen in the distribution of the labour force by sec-
tor. We can thus see a strong decrease in the number of elementary
occupations, which tend to become higher-qualification jobs. For
instance, the share of clerks, technicians, professionals, senior officials
and managers rises from less than 5% in the oldest generation to

nearly 50% in the second. Finally, the youngest generation, educated
under a democratic regime, confirms this trend, seeing a steady
decrease in jobs requiring low qualifications and an increase in higher-
qualification occupations.
Gender is important when looking at the occupational profile, which
reflects the structural inequalities of the Spanish population. In the old-
est generation a staggering proportion of female workers are employed
in elementary occupations (73.2% compared with 23.1% for their male
counterparts). The occupational profile of the middle generation is
notably different, with the share of elementary female occupations
decreasing from 73.2% to 28.16%. The general trends mentioned in
the previous paragraph are particularly significant for the youngest
generation of women. However, the proportion of women at the top of
the occupational hierarchy remains visibly low (2.69% of women vs.
5.28% of men).
Having now seen this overview of the changes in the Spanish popula-
tion’s stock of education and occupation over the last century, we can now
move on to study mobility itself. Correlation indices (Table 2) provide an
initial measure of intergenerational mobility and show whether there is a
statistically significant relationship of dependence between the educational
and occupational categories of children and their parents.
First of all, the results show that there is a statistically significant rela-
tionship of dependence in all cases studied. More specifically, these results
suggest the following:
The dependence is stronger for education than it is for occupation.

However, educational mobility does show certain changes across gen-
erations: there is far less mobility between the oldest and middle gen-
erations than between the latter and the third generation. In general, a
Table 2. Spearman correlation coefficients between educational and occupational

categories of parents and children, disaggregated by gender.
Total Third Second First
sample generation generation generation
Educational Man–father 0.3703 0.3296 0.3674 0.3631
category Man–mother 0.3035 0.2724 0.2867 0.2848
Woman–father 0.4020 0.3348 0.4050 0.3812
Woman–mother 0.3035 0.2724 0.2867 0.2848
Occupational Man–father 0.3688 0.3529 0.3817 0.3804
category Man–mother 0.1353 0.1666 0.1192 0.1366
Woman–father 0.335 0.281 0.3545 0.3451
Woman–mother 0.1353 0.1666 0.1192 0.1366
Note: all coefficients are significant at the 1% level.
father has a greater influence than a mother on the level of educational

attained by their children, although the gap tends to narrow over time.
Parents’ occupations seem to determine their children’s occupations to
a lesser degree. If the gender of parents is taken into account, we see
a strong dependence between a father’s occupation and his children’s,
while the occupational category of a mother does not seem to have
much of an influence on her children’s. Nevertheless, the results
suggest that a mother’s influence tends to grow over time.
As with educational mobility, occupational mobility tends to increase
over time.
Tables 3 and 4 present the transition matrices for education and occupa-
tion, with results disaggregated by gender and generation (let us remember
that the categories have been regrouped in order to make the necessary cal-
culations, as mentioned in Section 4.1). Table 5 summarises all this infor-
mation through mobility indices. Using the information provided by the
transition matrices and the mobility indices, it is possible to obtain a more
comprehensive picture of the intergenerational transmission of educational
and occupational status:
Education: immobility
For education, the highest immobility values in all matrices refer to

individuals with higher education qualifications and whose parents also
went through higher education. What is more, in terms of higher edu-
cation, the probability of immobility is stronger for mother–daughter
transmission than for mother–son or father–son transmission. This is
the case for the three generations under study. However, if we analyse
these immobility trends across generations, we note a large gender
12
Table 3. Educational transition matrices (from parents to children), three generations.

Third generation (%) Second generation (%) First generation (%)
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Father– man 1 20.4 27.1 23.4 2.9 26.2 40.7 23.3 17.5 1.3 17.2 45.8 27.6 13.7 1.8 11.2
2 4.1 32.4 25.3 2.3 35.8 10.2 21.0 26.6 0.6 41.6 26.8 22.6 22.6 1.8 26.1
3 5.2 7.9 37.1 2.9 46.9 5.2 5.7 36.6 2.0 50.4 7.8 24.1 23.0 2.4 42.7
4 0.0 1.1 25.5 8.4 65.0 6.7 3.0 22.7 22.2 45.3 5.9 4.7 33.7 2.0 53.8
5 1.4 3.6 22.7 1.9 70.4 1.7 3.9 21.8 0.7 71.9 4.6 2.1 35.3 15.1 43.0
Total 15.5 23.3 24.4 2.8 34.0 35.8 21.2 18.9 1.4 22.7 28.5 21.7 20.4 1.9 27.4
Mother–man 1 19.6 25.9 23.0 2.6 28.9 38.7 22.1 18.2 1.5 19.6 45.1 27.4 14.2 1.3 12.1
2 1.0 25.6 31.0 2.0 40.3 3.4 20.7 34.4 0.0 41.5 25.7 19.7 23.0 2.2 29.3
3 4.4 3.9 32.9 3.8 54.9 2.5 2.4 27.5 0.4 67.2 2.2 18.7 31.3 0.0 47.8
4 0.0 0.0 8.3 9.2 82.5 26.7 13.8 10.1 0.0 49.4 2.2 0.6 29.0 0.3 67.9
5 2.1 4.6 22.9 4.4 66.0 0.6 1.9 11.0 2.1 84.3 13.4 6.9 5.0 0.0 74.6
Total 15.6 23.2 24.4 2.7 34.1 36.0 21.0 18.6 1.4 23.0 30.6 21.4 19.8 1.7 26.5
Father–woman 1 18.2 24.0 21.8 2.8 33.2 48.9 23.8 14.1 0.8 12.4 54.5 26.2 10.8 1.4 7.0
L. De Pablos Escobar and M. Gil Izquierdo
2 2.3 18.7 30.2 3.1 45.7 8.2 34.8 32.2 0.8 24.1 32.5 22.6 19.4 1.4 24.2
3 1.8 5.5 26.0 2.3 64.3 7.2 13.6 37.3 1.8 40.1 6.3 23.2 34.5 2.4 33.5
4 3.5 0.0 27.9 7.2 61.3 10.1 17.2 16.7 16.5 39.5 5.9 10.4 34.8 1.2 47.7
5 1.6 4.5 16.0 2.5 75.3 3.7 5.3 22.2 2.0 66.7 0.0 11.8 27.6 11.3 49.3
Total 13.3 19.7 22.4 2.8 41.7 42.5 22.5 16.4 1.0 17.7 34.2 21.9 18.2 1.5 24.2
Mother–woman 1 17.0 23.0 22.3 2.9 34.8 45.5 23.3 15.6 0.9 14.7 53.3 26.4 10.4 1.9 7.9
2 0.9 18.0 28.7 2.3 50.1 5.3 32.2 25.7 0.0 36.8 30.2 21.8 21.0 1.2 25.7
3 1.0 2.6 27.0 3.4 66.1 1.4 8.3 35.8 1.0 53.6 4.9 23.8 29.2 1.1 41.0
4 0.0 5.4 11.2 21.2 62.1 0.0 0.0 42.3 44.4 13.4 0.9 7.1 29.4 0.0 62.6
5 0.0 1.8 12.4 1.9 83.9 2.8 0.1 22.2 1.8 73.0 0.0 0.0 24.3 25.5 50.3
Total 13.2 19.7 22.6 2.9 41.6 42.2 22.5 16.6 1.0 17.7 36.0 22.5 17.6 1.5 22.4
Notes: Each row totals 100%. In rows and columns: 1, primary education; 2, lower secondary education; 3, upper secondary education; 4, voca-
tional training; 5, higher education.
difference: over time, the proportion of immobility tends to decrease

for mother–son or father–son transmission, while it tends to increase
for daughters.
In terms of primary education, immobility is always greater for daugh-
ters than it is for sons, except in the youngest generation. Thus, in the
oldest and middle generations, daughters of parents with a lower level
of education are very likely to keep the same educational status. How-
ever, the difference between men and women tends to disappear over
time in the youngest generation.
Education: upward mobility

In all of the situations analysed (including generation and gender vari-

ables), the most frequent case of upward mobility is that of parents
with upper secondary education or vocational training whose children
reach higher education. This kind of upward mobility is particularly
common in the youngest generation, which seems to suggest that the
current education system gives children the opportunity to go beyond
the educational achievements of their parents, with additional positive
effects on other socio-economic indicators (higher income and better
jobs, if the literature on returns to education is to be believed).
Deepening our gender analysis, a mother’s educational status is again
more important than the fathers’ when it comes to determining the
educational achievements of their children nowadays (see Table 5: the
values of the upward–downward index are 7.94 for mother–daughter
relationship and 5.71 for mother–son, much higher than their father–
son and father–daughter counterparts). These results are in line with
the literature on the socio-economic determinants of education demand
(which shows that the educational status of a mother is a major predic-
tor of their children’s future status).4
Education: downward mobility
Across all generations, there is a lower proportion of downward mobil-

ity cases than either upward mobility or immobility cases. It is there-
fore less likely for children to have an educational status lower than
their parents’. Moreover, these cases are erratic; there is no distinct
trend if gender or generations are taken into account. The only trend
appears to be that children of fathers with vocational training or higher
education are more likely than others to obtain an upper secondary
level of education.
14
Table 4. Occupational transition matrices (from parents to children), three generations.

Third generation (%) Second generation (%) First generation (%)
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Father– man 1 38.5 33.5 8.7 9.9 9.3 28.3 42.7 8.7 12.5 7.8 28.8 40.0 8.7 13.7 8.8
2 10.3 53.7 9.3 15.6 11.1 11.4 54.5 8.2 14.2 11.8 10.5 53.0 9.0 15.5 11.9
3 12.8 22.6 27.3 22.9 14.5 10.5 24.1 21.2 21.8 22.3 10.0 22.7 23.9 23.6 19.8
4 12.3 21.0 7.0 36.2 23.5 4.3 19.4 6.6 34.1 35.5 5.6 20.1 5.2 36.6 32.6
5 4.1 21.8 10.4 21.2 42.5 6.0 10.5 7.9 23.7 51.9 5.0 12.3 8.2 21.9 52.6
Total 15.0 39.0 10.8 18.4 16.8 14.3 42.5 8.9 16.8 17.4 13.6 40.3 9.5 18.4 18.4
Mother–man 1 18.3 39.6 10.5 16.8 14.8 15.9 43.5 8.9 16.6 15.2 15.4 41.8 9.2 18.3 15.3
2 11.3 53.8 10.1 14.7 10.1 10.3 52.3 6.6 14.5 16.3 10.4 51.6 6.8 15.0 16.1
3 9.2 34.9 16.7 25.6 13.6 7.7 28.9 16.7 22.3 24.4 7.1 26.4 16.5 26.9 23.2
4 7.9 25.0 6.6 32.2 28.2 4.5 16.1 5.5 30.6 43.3 3.5 16.9 4.3 31.9 43.3
5 5.8 26.6 10.6 17.1 39.9 5.9 18.5 8.5 14.1 53.0 2.9 21.3 8.4 10.9 56.4
Total 14.9 39.4 10.9 18.6 16.2 14.1 42.7 8.9 16.8 17.4 13.5 41.0 9.1 18.5 17.9
Father–woman 1 35.1 8.9 20.1 24.4 11.5 44.7 13.4 20.7 13.6 7.7 39.6 12.4 21.1 17.1 9.9
2 17.6 13.9 24.3 29.0 15.2 27.9 21.6 22.7 17.7 10.1 24.4 19.8 22.4 21.7 11.7
3 10.1 6.1 31.3 38.0 14.5 16.4 7.8 29.2 26.3 20.4 14.0 6.7 30.8 29.5 19.0
4 7.3 2.8 18.6 45.8 25.4 11.6 6.7 13.5 44.3 23.8 7.7 5.1 15.5 47.2 24.6
5 9.1 3.2 13.7 45.2 28.8 11.9 4.0 9.4 36.9 37.8 8.9 3.6 10.5 39.6 37.4
Total 17.7 9.4 22.0 33.3 17.6 28.1 15.7 20.5 21.5 14.2 23.7 14.0 20.7 25.6 16.0
Mother–woman 1 21.7 9.8 21.8 30.7 15.9 31.3 14.8 20.0 21.5 12.4 27.5 13.9 20.6 24.2 13.8
2 14.0 18.5 23.8 31.4 12.3 24.7 28.4 20.2 16.7 10.0 23.0 25.6 19.7 21.6 10.0
3 11.4 4.8 31.1 36.3 16.4 10.7 9.3 37.9 25.0 17.1 10.4 8.8 34.7 30.0 16.0
4 7.5 0.4 13.5 53.3 25.2 5.7 1.5 11.5 48.6 32.8 7.0 1.1 10.0 45.8 36.2
5 5.3 2.7 14.4 35.2 42.2 11.2 3.9 13.4 18.3 53.3 7.8 2.8 13.3 25.7 50.4
Total 17.7 9.4 22.0 33.3 17.6 27.7 15.9 20.9 21.5 14.1 24.3 14.6 21.0 24.8 15.3
Notes: Each row totals 100%. In rows and columns: 1, unskilled workers; 2, skilled agricultural and craft workers, machine operators and assem-
blers; 3, service and sales workers; 4, clerical workers; 5, senior officials, managers, professionals and technicians.
Occupation: immobility
Firstly, it is worth noting that the father–son intergenerational transmis-

sion of immobility regarding occupational status (proportion of immobil-
ity cases) is higher than it is for educational immobility, particularly in
the youngest generation. The opposite is true with regards to mother–
children and father–daughter mobility. This suggests than in Spain men
are still very likely to ‘inherit’ their fathers’ occupational category. For
men, most of these cases of immobility are seen across all generations,
on the one hand, in relatively low occupational categories such as agri-
cultural and craft workers, machine operators and assemblers, and on the
other in the senior managerial and professional categories. Even in the
youngest generation, a large proportion of unskilled workers have ‘inher-
ited’ the status of their fathers, as in the oldest generations.

In contrast, for women most of the immobility cases occur in unskilled
occupations, in clerical jobs (transmission father–daughter and mother–
daughter) or in managerial positions (transmission mother–daughter).
Considering only managerial positions, the youngest generation shows a
large proportion of immobility cases across all variables (if parents are
managers or executives, their children are likely to have the same kind
of job) except for mother–son transmission. Therefore, as far as senior
managerial jobs are concerned, a mother’s occupation seems to influence
her daughter’s but not her son’s occupation.
Occupation: upward mobility
Occupational upward mobility is far less frequent than its educational

counterpart, while downward mobility is more common. Generation wise,
Spanish men in the middle generation have particularly improved their
occupational status compared with their parents’. A massive entry to uni-
versity starting in the 1970s allowed men to obtain better jobs and move
up the social ladder, as Carabaña (1999) highlights. As for women, they
have had to wait until more recently to start getting better jobs than their
parents; it is the youngest generation that shows the most occupational
upward mobility. The highest degree of upward mobility occurs for the
mother–daughter relationship, although unlike with men this shows
women’s strong will to improve their status in the job market.
Occupation: downward mobility
The downward intergenerational changes of occupational status have a

strong gender bias: downward mobility for men occurs mostly towards
Table 5. Educational and occupational mobility indices, parents–children disaggre-

gated by gender.
Educational
Father–man Upward 240.2% 257.9% 225.8% 203.6%
mobility
Downward 76.2% 73.4% 81.8% 160.0%
mobility
Immobility 183.6% 168.7% 192.4% 136.4%
Immobility 0.367 0.337 0.385 0.273
index
Upward/ 3.15 3.51 2.76 1.27
downward
Mother–man Upward 279.3% 295.1% 254.2% 225.1%

mobility
Downward 55.4% 51.7% 74.6% 103.8%
mobility
Immobility 165.3% 153.3% 171.2% 171.1%
Immobility 0.331 0.307 0.342 0.342
index
Upward/ 5.04 5.71 3.41 2.17
downward
Father– Upward 245.5% 288.8% 189.5% 174.1%
woman mobility
Downward 81.4% 65.8% 106.2% 163.9%
mobility
Immobility 173.1% 145.4% 204.3% 162.0%
Immobility 0.346 0.291 0.409 0.324
index
Upward/ 3.02 4.39 1.78 1.06
downward
Mother– Upward 256.1% 295.7% 184.9% 199.4%
woman mobility
Downward 50.8% 37.2% 84.2% 146.0%
mobility
Immobility 193.1% 167.1% 230.9% 154.6%
Immobility 0.386 0.334 0.462 0.309
index
Upward/ 5.04 7.94 2.20 1.37
downward
Occupational
Father–man Upward 172.1% 158.4% 185.4% 183.7%
mobility
Downward 134.7% 143.5% 124.5% 121.5%
mobility
Immobility 193.1% 198.1% 190.1% 194.8%
Immobility 0.386 0.396 0.380 0.390
index
(Continued)
Table 5. (Continued).
Upward/ 1.28 1.10 1.49 1.51
downward
Mother–man Upward 193.6% 184.0% 211.5% 216.0%
mobility
Downward 143.1% 155.1% 119.9% 112.2%
mobility
Immobility 163.3% 161.0% 168.5% 171.8%
Immobility 0.327 0.322 0.337 0.344
index
Upward/ 1.35 1.19 1.76 1.93
downward
Father– Upward 192.4% 211.3% 176.2% 189.3%

woman mobility
Downward 140.3% 133.8% 146.2% 136.0%
mobility
Immobility 167.3% 154.9% 177.6% 174.7%
Immobility 0.335 0.310 0.355 0.349
index
Upward/ 1.37 1.58 1.21 1.39
downward
Mother– Upward 204.7% 223.7% 190.5% 206.0%
woman mobility
Downward 112.0% 109.4% 110.2% 109.9%
mobility
Immobility 183.3% 166.9% 199.3% 184.1%
Immobility 0.367 0.334 0.399 0.368
index
Upward/ 1.83 2.05 1.73 1.88
downward
agricultural, industrial, construction or manufacture jobs, particularly

in the youngest generation. This suggests than in recent years young
men have tended to prefer ‘lower’ occupations than their parents’,
especially if these were senior officials, managers, qualified technicians
and professionals. However, downward mobility of women largely rep-
resents the transition from a managerial position of parents to a clerical
job. This is particularly frequent in the youngest generation.
Table 6 shows the results of an ordered probit model of occupational cat-

egories of sons and daughters. This model provides the causality relation-
ship between parents’ and children’s education and occupation, and
corroborates the aforementioned: the distinct roles of fathers and mothers
and the differences between men and women are all confirmed. The results
18
Table 6. Ordered probit models for education and occupation, disaggregated by gender.
Women Men
Coefficient Robust standard error p value Coefficient Robust standard error p value
Father Lower secondary education −0.003 0.059 0.955 0.039 0.053 0.460
Upper secondary education 0.176 0.060 0.003 0.397 0.057 0.000
Higher education 0.514 0.061 0.000 1.155 0.064 0.000
Mother Lower secondary education 0.063 0.058 0.275 0.095 0.053 0.072
Upper secondary education 0.484 0.059 0.000 0.169 0.055 0.002
Higher education 1.318 0.067 0.000 0.441 0.059 0.000
Mother Occupation_2 0.018 0.051 0.724 0.061 0.050 0.227
Occupation_3 0.155 0.064 0.015 0.108 0.064 0.088
Occupation_4 0.261 0.111 0.019 −0.115 0.099 0.245
Occupation_5 0.399 0.128 0.002 0.062 0.104 0.553
Father Occupation_2 0.175 0.055 0.001 0.349 0.048 0.000
Occupation_3 0.452 0.077 0.000 0.568 0.080 0.000

Occupation_4 0.414 0.081 0.000 0.723 0.076 0.000
Occupation_5 0.556 0.081 0.000 0.984 0.076 0.000
Cut point 1 −0.129 0.055 −0.459 0.050

Cut point 2 0.330 0.056 0.990 0.051
Cut point 3 1.066 0.059 1.344 0.052
Cut point 4 2.186 0.068 2.056 0.057
Number of observations 4862 5736

Wald χ2(16) 1129.72 1271.47
Probability > χ2 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.132 0.126
Log pseudolikelihood −663899 −742877
show that a mother having completed higher education is a key determinant

for her daughter obtaining a better job, while a father having entered higher
education plays a similar role for his son. A father’s occupation has a
decisive impact on his children’s occupational status, particularly on his
son’s, while a mother’s occupation is far less important, becoming even
non-significant in the case of her sons.
6. Conclusions
To date intergenerational mobility studies have been quite rare in Spanish sci-
entific literature, although they have been attracting an increasing amount of
attention recently. This kind of analysis intends to test empirically how rigid
societies are when it comes to parents ‘passing on’ their status (whether in
terms of education or occupation) to their children. It also helps identify mech-
anisms (in the job market or through the education system, fiscal measures, or
equal opportunity legislation) to prevent children from ‘inheriting’ the unfa-
vourable situation of their parents. The recent existence of longitudinal data
over a long period in Spain (Module on Intergenerational Transmission of
Poverty, EU-SILC 2005) has made this kind of work possible.
This paper has two goals: firstly, to perform a gender analysis to assess
how education and occupation are transmitted; and secondly, to study this
intergenerational transmission for the historical development of the Spanish
society. This is made possible by the long period for which data are avail-
able and by distinguishing three different age cohorts: the first generation
includes individuals born before the Spanish Civil War; the second genera-
tion comprises the share of the population born between 1939 and 1965;
and the third and youngest generation includes those born after 1965 (and
before 1980, since the considered sample only includes individuals aged 25
and over).
The empirical work is presented under the form of several mobility indi-
cators that are easily interpreted. The choice of indicators was made taking
into account the paper’s goals: they measure mobility both as an aggregate
magnitude (through correlation and mobility coefficients) and in detail
(through transition matrices).
During the Civil War and the Dictatorship, both the educational system
and the Spanish labour market show some structural problems, among oth-
ers an under-representation of women in both sectors. However, the educa-
tion system in Spain has evolved over the last decades from a situation of
‘inherited’ privileges to a situation where access to education, including
higher education, has been largely democratised and has become available
to children of less educated parents. Moreover, the importance of a mother’s
educational status has grown considerably and currently plays a decisive
role in determining the educational achievements of her children.
From a gender perspective, there have been remarkable changes in capi-

tal stock over the last century. In the oldest generation, over 90% of women
have primary education or below. In the second generation, the proportion
of women with primary education or below decreases to 42.5% and the
share of women reaching higher education grows to 17.5%. In the youngest
generation, the share of women completing higher education is particularly
large (42%) and much larger than that of men (34.3%).
The positive sociological change that occurred in terms of gender in
access to education (particularly in higher education) is not reflected to the
same extent in the labour market. The educational investment of women
still has a limited impact in the job market: upward occupational mobility,
especially towards the highest categories (professional, managerial and
executive positions), is much more common for men than it is for women –
although the gap has decreased for the youngest generation. The rigidity of
the Spanish labour market (where concepts such as working from home,
work–life balance, equality of rights for maternity and childcare leave are
still infrequent) might be the reason behind this stagnation of women’s
occupational situation.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support received by the Institute for
Fiscal Studies, IEF (Spain), under a research project. They also appreciate
the useful comments made by two anonymous referees and the suggestions
and comments made by Gerardo Meil.
Notes
1. For a review of regression techniques applied to mobility analysis, see Zimmerman
(1992) and Calero et al. (2007).
2. These are average values, not disaggregated by gender.
3. Several studies confirm the importance of being a woman to determine demand
for higher education and success in secondary education in Spain, contrary to
the trend observed in other countries. The literature provides several explana-
tions for this: the fact that women draw allegedly higher benefits than men
from education (see Arrazola and Hevia 2001); the need for women to have
higher levels of education in order to compete with men (known as the ‘filter’
theory, see Mora 1997); discrimination against women in the labour market
(see Albert 2000, 2001); higher unemployment rates and opportunity costs for
women (see Marcenaro and Navarro 2001); and better academic grades
obtained by women.
4. See, among others, Mora (1997), Albert (2000, 2001), Rahona (2006) or Gil,
De Pablos, and Martínez (2010).
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British Journal of Sociology of Education

ISSN: 0142-5692 (Print) 1465-3346 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbse20

Intergenerational educational and occupational

Laura De Pablos Escobar & María Gil Izquierdo

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.969397

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Download by: [McMaster University] Date: 21 March 2016, At: 22:58

Intergenerational educational and occupational mobility in Spain:

This paper explores the changes in intergenerational mobility seen in

*Corresponding author. Email: lpablos@ccee.ucm.es

The structure of this paper is as follows: after this introduction, we pro-

education, especially the mother’s. These results were corroborated by Gil,

EU-SILC 2005 to study relative social intergenerational mobility. Their

 Correlation indices between educational or occupational categories of

 Transition matrices provide a detailed comparison between the educa-

between the ordinal classiﬁcations of the different categories of two given

for example, that individuals generally have a better educational or occupa-

4.1. Data and methodological decisions

Education Law adopted in 1970. This Law sought to achieve a universal

Figure 1. Distribution of the active population (%) in Spain by sector, males,

Figure 2. Distribution of the active population (%) in Spain by sector, females,

5. Results and discussion

Table 1 presents the distribution of the stock of education and occupa-

 There has been a sharp increase in the Spanish population’s stock of

a category of primary education or below, whilst in the second genera-

Table 1. Stock of education and occupation in Spain across three generations,

below decreases to 42.5% and the share of women reaching higher

and managers rises from less than 5% in the oldest generation to

 The dependence is stronger for education than it is for occupation.

Table 2. Spearman correlation coefﬁcients between educational and occupational

Source: Authors, based on EU-SILC 2005.

father has a greater inﬂuence than a mother on the level of educational

 For education, the highest immobility values in all matrices refer to

Table 3. Educational transition matrices (from parents to children), three generations.

difference: over time, the proportion of immobility tends to decrease

Education: upward mobility

 In all of the situations analysed (including generation and gender vari-

Education: downward mobility

 Across all generations, there is a lower proportion of downward mobil-

Table 4. Occupational transition matrices (from parents to children), three generations.

 Firstly, it is worth noting that the father–son intergenerational transmis-

ited’ the status of their fathers, as in the oldest generations.

Occupation: upward mobility

 Occupational upward mobility is far less frequent than its educational

Occupation: downward mobility

 The downward intergenerational changes of occupational status have a

Table 5. Educational and occupational mobility indices, parents–children disaggre-

Mother–man Upward 279.3% 295.1% 254.2% 225.1%

Father– Upward 192.4% 211.3% 176.2% 189.3%

agricultural, industrial, construction or manufacture jobs, particularly

Table 6 shows the results of an ordered probit model of occupational cat-

Occupation_3 0.452 0.077 0.000 0.568 0.080 0.000

Cut point 1 −0.129 0.055 −0.459 0.050

Number of observations 4862 5736

show that a mother having completed higher education is a key determinant

From a gender perspective, there have been remarkable changes in capi-

América Latina [Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America].” Research

Hayes, B. C. 1987. “Female Intergenerational Occupational Mobility within North-

Martínez, X., A. Marín. 2012. “Educación y movilidad social en España [Education

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Correlation indices between educational or occupational categories of

Transition matrices provide a detailed comparison between the educa-

There has been a sharp increase in the Spanish population’s stock of

The dependence is stronger for education than it is for occupation.

For education, the highest immobility values in all matrices refer to

In all of the situations analysed (including generation and gender vari-

Across all generations, there is a lower proportion of downward mobil-

Firstly, it is worth noting that the father–son intergenerational transmis-

Occupational upward mobility is far less frequent than its educational

The downward intergenerational changes of occupational status have a