Intergenerational education mobility of black and white South Africans

Using the October Household Surveys, we found that the intergenerational education mobility of whites is higher than that of blacks. Among blacks, females have a higher intergenerational education mobility than males, while the poorest have the lowest intergenerational education mobility. The lower education mobility of blacks than that of whites indicate that factors such as access to the credit market, as well as the availability and quality of schools, are important determinants of educational attainment. Interestingly, the cross section estimates of black intergenerational education mobility do not differ from those obtained by using pseudopanel data, which control for unobserved community effects.