Introduction

Research on Economic Inequality: Opportunity, Mobility and Inequality comprises seven papers each of which present original research using novel data and empirical methods to uncover new findings about intergenerational mobility, inequality and welfare. The chapters in this volume reflect the contribution of newly published rich datasets that deepen our understanding of these issues, as much as novel innovations about how we conceive and measure these economic entities.

We open the volume with empirical evidence from Chile, which uses for the first time novel administrative panel data to measure intergenerational mobility in a developing country. The authors generate a panel data set using a national educational test with surveys of students in the eighth grade and analyses their intergenerational income mobility in their late twenties. The significant addition to the literature stems from the article’s use of administrative data from Chile’s Ministry of Labour of wage data tracked by the Department of Unemployment Insurance to obtain their cohort members’ salaries between 2007 and 2018. The administrative surveys are the national mandatory SIMCE test, and the national voluntary college selection test provided by the Ministry of Education and DEMRE (Department for the Educational Testing, Measurement, and Records of the University of Chile). Using social class and role model proxies, they show that college educational outcomes are related to early years’ social and educational environments. The authors use panel regression methods to reveal that remarkably 8^th grade students placed in the lowest income quartile have a probability of 9% of rising to the top income decile in their late twenties. These students are, however, not immune from difficulties in future economic mobility due to having low college enrollment and graduation rates.