We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 16465
September 2023
Economic Mobility and Fairness in a Developing Country: Evidence from Peru
Juan Francisco Castro, Gustavo Yamada, Santiago Medina, Joaquin Armas

Periods of rapid economic growth in developing countries have been well studied in terms of poverty and income inequality reduction, but much less is known about the performance of these countries in terms of economic mobility. We study intragenerational mobility in Peru using an asset-based measure of wealth and longitudinal data from the Young Lives project (2002 - 2016). We find that Peruvian households enjoyed a moderately large degree of mobility in this period. Averages, however, mask significant differences between Spanish-speaking households and those that speak an indigenous language. We estimate a positive mobility gap in favor of Spanish-speaking households of 12.7 percentiles, and find that half of this gap persists after controlling for a comprehensive set of household characteristics that impact their ability to accumulate wealth. We propose a new measure of individual mobility and use it to assess the degree of inequality of opportunity for mobility, that is, to what extent is mobility caused by circumstances outside of households' control. We find that this fraction is at least 17.4% for the most disadvantaged half of the population, but only 1.9% for the more advantaged half.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)