Skin Color and Social Mobility: Evidence From Mexico

Abstract

In many Latin American countries, census data on race and skin color are scarce or nonexistent. In this study, we contribute to understanding how skin color affects intergenerational social mobility in Mexico. Using a novel data set, we provide evidence of profound social stratification by skin color, even after controlling for specific individual characteristics that previous work has not been able to include, such as individual cognitive and noncognitive abilities, parental education and wealth, and measures of stress and parenting style in the home of origin. Results indicate that people in the lightest skin color category have an average of 1.4 additional years of schooling and 53 % more in hourly earnings than their darkest-skinned counterparts. Social mobility is also related to skin color. Individuals in the darkest category are 20 percentile ranks lower in the current wealth distribution than those in the lightest category, conditional on parental wealth. In addition, results of a quantile regression indicate that the darkest group shows higher downward mobility.

Skin Tone Differences in Social Mobility in Mexico: Are We Forgetting Regional Variance?

“…Flores and Telles (2012); Telles (2014); Villarreal (2010) identify that individuals with darker skill tones tend to have a lower educational attainment compared to their lighter skin tone peers. In terms of socioeconomic status, Campos-Vázquez and Medina-Cortina (2019) identify that upward mobility rates in terms of ranks of the socioeconomic status distribution are lower for dark skin individuals than for white skin individuals. This occurs due to differences in the steady states to which individuals of each skin tone are converging and not by differences in the rank correlation between origin and current position.…”

“…By design, the experimental evidence (Aguilar, 2011;Arceo-Gómez and Campos-Vázquez, 2014;Campos-Vázquez and Medina-Cortina, 2018;Arceo-Gómez and Campos-Vázquez, 2019) can only be generalized to populations that are at least similar to the specific sample who participated in the experiment. In the case of the papers that employ survey information (Aguilar, 2013;Flores and Telles, 2012;Telles, 2014;Villarreal, 2010;Campos-Vázquez and Medina-Cortina, 2019;Vélez-Grajales, Monroy-Gómez-Franco and Yalonetzky, 2018), all the surveys are only representative at the national level. Thus, this body of research is unable to disentangle the compounding effect of regional differences and skin color identified in other countries (Cutler and Glaeser, 1997;Chetty et al, 2019).…”

Being white is a full time job? Explaining skin tone gradients in income in Mexico

“…Studies on inequalities based on skin tone are growing, particularly in Mexico (Villarreal 2010;Campos-Vazquez and Medina-Cortina 2019). This is not surprising, as skin complexion is more salient than race in Mexico; by contrast, the US and Europe emphasize respectively race and ethnicity (Hunter 2007).…”

Mexico’s Struggle with Development between Global Compromises and National Development Plans

“…In the poorest quintile there were less than 3 percent of white people, whereas 20 percent were light brown, and the majority were brown or very dark brown. Moving toward the richest quintiles, there was a gradual increase in white people and a significantly lower percentage of very dark brown people (Campos Vázquez ). The results were disconcerting as they revealed a huge difference between the two groups; young people in rich families always scored much higher.…”

“…Piecemeal interventions do not provide enough results. There is a concomitant need for a “big push” and vision to really introduce fundamental change in different areas, for example, social policies, education, labor market, to name a few (Campos Vázquez ).…”