Residential Mobility, Education and Social Mobility

There has been an extensive literature on the relation between education and social mobility, and more specifically the extent to which education can ensure intergenerational mobility regarding different social and economic positions in the society. In the context of sub-Saharan Africa with enormous inequalities in access to resources and where at the same time traditional solidarity networks through the extended family, play a role of social safety nets, one can argue that the social support to the more disadvantaged people in the society can be a leverage to enabling intergenerational mobility. Using event history data collected in Burkina Faso in 2000 which concerned 8,644 individuals aged 15-64 years at the time of the survey, we analyze residential mobility, education attainment, and movements of three synthetic cohort (1975-85, 1965-74 and the 1955-64 birth cohort) across social stratification ladders, comparing their family socioeconomic status background to their socioeconomic status at the time of the survey.