In their latest research, Dr. Neil Guppy and Stanford PhD student Alex Chow examine patterns of intergenerational exchange mobility in Canada, aiming to determine the possible changes in linkage between parent’s and their children’s education over the past century. In the context of higher university attendance rates among young adults when compared to previous generations, we might have the impression of greater upward educational mobility and subsequent class mobility. However, Guppy and Chow attribute this to the structural expansion of the Canadian Education system rather than to an increased rate of intergenerational exchange mobility.
Dr. Neil Guppy
Through the construction of a longitudinal dataset based on Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey between 1986 and 2014 and the comparison of results to recent economic findings examining intergenerational income mobility, Guppy and Chow find that despite a considerable expansion of Canada’s education system, intergenerational exchange mobility has remained stagnant in the country for the past century.
