How to escape poverty through education?: intergenerational evidence in Spain

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the determinants of escaping poverty through education in Spain, with this being the country that, is among the top European countries regarding the percentage of the population affected by poverty. Specifically, the article studies the transmission of poverty over two generations by analysing the factors that affect the probability of having completed the secondary level of education. To that end, we use the conceptual Quantity–Quality model of Becker–Lewis, empirically estimated by using the Survey of Living Conditions (2011) provided by the Spanish Statistical Institute. Our results confirm the intergenerational transmission of poverty in Spain, in such a way that the probability that the respondent has completed secondary education is determined, although not exclusively, by the family conditions of the respondents during their teenage years.

KEYWORDS:

• Poverty
• education
• intergenerational transmission
• Spain

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D12
• I32
• I21

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Intergenerational transmission of socio-economic variables and behaviours in Spain has been analysed, for example, in Gimenez-Nadal, Molina, and Ortega (2015) for housework time, or Duarte, Escario, and Molina (2016) for the case of smoking.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [Project ECO2012-34828] is gratefully acknowledged.