Join us for the 2nd public lecture in honour of Professor Michael Lipton. The lecture will be delivered by Professor Francisco H. G. Ferreira of the London School of Economics (LSE) who will speak on ‘Inherited Inequality in Latin America’.
Professor Ferreira argues that relative measures of intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity are closely related approaches to quantifying the inheritability of inequality. In this lecture, he reviews both strands of literature in the context of Latin America, examining persistence in both income and educational attainment across generations. His analysis highlights very high levels of intergenerational persistence and inequality of opportunity in education, with inherited characteristics accounting for between 29% and 52% of the variation in years of schooling among the current generation.
His estimates of inequality of opportunity in income acquisition indicate that between 46% and 66% of contemporary income Gini coefficients can be explained by a relatively limited set of inherited circumstances. These findings suggest that Latin America is a region where inequality is highly inheritable by international standards. The review also identifies a wide range of estimates for intergenerational income elasticity, with considerable uncertainty arising from data limitations and methodological differences across studies.
This draws on joint work with Paolo Brunori, Guido Neidhofer, Pedro Salas-Rojo, and Louis Sirugue.
Hosted by the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex Business School and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS). This event celebrates the outstanding contributions that Professor Michael Lipton made to the Department of Economics and to IDS, and for the work he has inspired in the fields of development economics and agricultural economics.
Speaker
Professor Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director, International Inequalities Institute the London School of Economics (LSE). His work on the measurement, causes, and consequences of inequality and poverty in developing countries has been published widely and awarded various prizes, including the Richard Stone Prize in Applied Econometrics and the Kendrick Prize from the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.
Chair
Professor Sambit Bhattacharyya, Professor of Economics (Economics) University of Sussex Business School. He is ranked by ScholarGPS as a top 0.8% academic economist in the world for overall contribution and publication quality. His research interests are in the areas of development economics, macroeconomics, and economic history.
About Professor Michael Lipton
Professor Michael Lipton was a British economist, IDS and Sussex icon, and a leading scholar of Development Studies and Development Economics. He made pioneering contributions to the study of poverty and living standards. Professor Lipton sadly passed away in 2023 at the age of 83. A link to the tribute page could be found here.
How to attend
You can attend in person or watch online on Zoom. Please register below.
Accessiblity
This event will take place in the IDS Convening Space which is on the 1st floor of the IDS Building. If you need to use the lift then press floor 1A.
If you have any accessbility requrements, then email [email protected] or visit this page.
Key contacts
