2024/11/27 by Ercio Muñoz, Gabriela Jaque · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare #Education and Vocational Training
paper · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2026.107415
openalex publication_date 2024/11/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/16
We estimate sibling correlations in schooling (i.e., the fraction of inequality in educational outcomes attributable to factors shared by siblings) for 128 countries, which account for 94% of the world’s population. With this new database, we document several findings. In the average country in our sample, at least 56% of the inequality in schooling can be attributed to factors shared by siblings, with estimated sibling correlations ranging from as low as 0.15 to as high as 0.87 across individual samples. There are significant regional differences, with Europe and Central Asia showing the lowest and South Asia the highest levels of sibling correlation. There is also substantial heterogeneity within some regions. The average sibling correlation has been decreasing across cohorts; in some regions, however, it has stagnated. At the global level, educational mobility appears strongly correlated with several social and economic variables. • We construct a new global database of sibling correlations in schooling covering 128 countries and 94% of the world population. • Our findings show that, in the average country, over half of the variation in schooling is attributable to shared family and background factors. • Educational mobility has increased globally since the 1940s, though progress has stagnated in regions such as MENA and sub-Saharan Africa. • We uncover substantial regional and within-region heterogeneity, with South Asia exhibiting the lowest mobility and Europe and Central Asia the highest. • Sibling similarity in schooling is strongly associated with several social and economic indicators.