Bangladesh has made significant progress in absolute intergenerational mobility (IGM), meaning the share of individuals exceeding their parents, in education with 65 percent of girls being more educated than their fathers, said an economics professor teaching in a Canadian university.
However, relative IGM, meaning the extent an individual is economically independent of parents’ position, is still low and even worse in case of girls, said Dr Sadequl Islam of Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
He was presenting a paper at a seminar on “Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility in Education and Income in Bangladesh and Selected Countries” organised by the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at Brac University (BracU) on Wednesday (19 June 2019).
The paper compared Bangladesh’s performance in absolute and relative mobility in education and income with countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China and Vietnam using mainly the Global Database on Intergenerational Mobility produced by World Bank.
Professor Islam referred to a “Gatsby equation”, the results of which supported the hypothesis that a) as inequality rises, relative mobility in income falls and b) as per capita income rises, relative mobility in income rises.
It finds that income inequality has no significant impact on relative mobility in education among a cross-section of countries.
Professor Islam warned that growing privatisation of education in Bangladesh poses a significant barrier to relative IGM, with the country spending less than 2 percent of its GDP on education, far less than developed countries and many developing countries.
Education is a significant driver of IGM and access to quality education at all levels can be a powerful driver to promote relative IGM in education and income, he said.
Addressing the event, BracU President and Vice Chancellor Professor Vincent Chang said education was the ultimate weapon for bringing equality and bring pace to society.
Students must understand that a big part of the society is still fighting to change fates and many, despite being intelligent and industrious, are falling behind for a lack of scope, he said.
BracU has decided that its students will work with Brac for six weeks to get an understanding of society’s reality, he added.