Argentina Exceptionalism: Social Mobility and the Reversal of Development in Argentina

Abstract

The effects of education on social mobility are studied in Argentina, a country that has undergone unprecedented economic and political upheaval. Among the richest in the world at the beginning of the 20th century, it was ranked 60th by per capita GDP at the century’s end; a phenomenon known as “the Argentine Paradox”. The interrelationships between class origin, education, and class destination are all explored. Regarding educational inequalities and returns on education, no fluctuations towards a particular direction were identified, although returns on education changed according to social classes. We found, contrary to “popular wisdom”, that as access to education increased, social fluidity fell. Neither educational expansion nor educational inequalities contributed to social fluidity, and we added the possibility of a growing association between origin-destination, as educational levels improved.

Keywords:

• Social class
• mobility
• education
• counterfactual effects

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The survey was conducted by the Programa de Investigación sobre la Sociedad Argentina Contemporánea (PISAC). Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva, based on a probabilistic multi-stage sample. See details in: http://pisac.mincyt.gob.ar/datos_descargas/Instructivo_Base_ENES.pdf.

2 “Chief Household Earners” are those who make the largest economic contribution to household expenditures.

3 Goldthorpe (2016), for example, adds “or in effect age groups” (p. 92).

4 Excepting the compositional effect, the layer (or multiplicative factor) of all equations is made up of different cohorts. For the compositional effect, the layer is composed of education (logF_{ijk =} µ + λi +λj^D+λk^E+λik^OE+λjk^DE+βkX_ij).A double layer consisting of education plus cohorts (logF_{ijkl =} µ + λi^O+λj^D+ λk^E +λl^C+λik^OE+λjk^DE+λil^OC +λjl^DC +λkl^EC +βklX_ij) was computed, in order to observe the changes to the compositional effect over time.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jorge Raúl Jorrat

Jorge Raúl Jorrat (Ph.D. Sociology, MSU). Principal Researcher (National Council of Scientific and Technical Research—CONICET), at Instituto Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires. (Formally retired). His research interests are two-fold: stratification and social class mobility, and electoral studies.

He has published several books, the latest in 2016: “De Tal Padre … ¿Tal Hijo?” Estudios sobre Movilidad Social en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Dunken). [Like Father … Like Son? Studies on Social Mobility in Argentina]. His most recent article (2021), with Sandra Fachelli and Pedro López Roldán, is Intergenerational class mobility over birth cohorts in Argentina and Spain (Revista Española de Sociología 30, 3). He has coauthored with Darío Canton a trilogy on electoral studies in the city of Buenos Aires (Elecciones en la ciudad 1864-2007 [Elections in the City 1864-2007], three volumes edited by the Instituto Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires). Former Director of the Centro de Estudios de Opinión Pública, Universidad de Buenos Aires, as well as Argentina’s former representative at the International Social Survey Program (ISSP).

Ildefonso Marqués-Perales

Ildefonso Marqués Perales (Ph.D. Sociology, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca). Professor of Sociology at the Universidad de Sevilla. His field of study is social classes and social mobility. He has published two books (Génesis de la teoría social de Pierre Bourdieu [Genesis of the Social Theory of Pierre Bourdieu], CIS 2009; La movilidad social en España [Social Mobility in Spain], 2014) and is the coauthor of articles in national journals (Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas and Revista Internacional de Sociología), and international journals (British Journal of Sociology, Social Indicators Research, and Research in Social Stratification and Mobility). He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Leeds (England), at Tilburg University (The Netherlands) and at the Instituto Gino Germani (Universidad de Buenos Aires).