Evidencia sobre la movilidad intergeneracional de los ingresos laborales para un paí­s en desarrollo: el caso de Uruguay

This paper aims to provide original evidence about intergenerational mobility on earnings in a developing country like Uruguay. The intergenerational elasticity on earnings (IGE) and the intergenerational rank association (IRA) are estimated through Two Sample Two Step Least Square (2S2SLS), estimator usually used in those countries that do not have longitudinal information. In addition, through the application of transition matrices and quantile regression approach, nonlinearities in intergenerational mobility are studied. The findings would locate Uruguay within the group of Latin American countries with high intergenerational earnings mobility together with Argentina and Chile. However, the mobility of Uruguay seems to be low in comparison to European countries. In addition, the lowest levels of intergenerational mobility are found in the tail of the distribution, which would suggest the presence of status tramps. In other words, people who are born in low-income households have greater difficulties in achieving upward mobility; on the other hand, people who are born in high-income households have a low probability of suffering downward mobility.