Inequalities in the Mexican Labor Market, Family Determinants and the Role of Education

Edith Pacheco, El Colegio de México

Given the economic transformations and the changes in educational attainment, fertility and cultural patterns in Mexico, it is interesting to know how the various generations have been inserted in the work dynamic and the extent to which these generations have preserved their parents' occupational condition or whether, on the contrary, education has enabled them to achieve upward social mobility. A study of three generations (1930s, 1950s and 1960s) found that regardless of the birth cohort, family origin was the most important variable for explaining the likelihood that Mexican men would be engaged in manual occupations, whereas education was the factor that provided the greatest explanation for non-manual occupations (Pacheco 2005). The aim of this paper is to examine what has happened in the cohorts born in the 1980s and 1990s -years marked by severe economic crises and the extremely limited recovery of the Mexican economy.