Intergenerational Persistence of Skills and Socioeconomic Status

This paper describes how the socioeconomic status (SES) of parents relates to the formation and development of the skills and preferences of their teenage children, which have proven to be key to understanding differences in life outcomes. The study used data from a novel survey, conducted in Mexico, that recorded cognitive and non-cognitive skills and social preferences of both parents and children. It analyzed the relationship between the SES of parents and their children’s skills, and found that children’s skills were consistently related to parental skills, and that intergenerational persistence of skills was higher for cognitive than for non-cognitive skills or social preferences. It also found that the cognitive skills gap between the first and fifth quintile of SES was related mainly to characteristics like parents’ own skills, years of schooling, and aspirations for their children, but that these parental characteristics were less important in explaining non-cognitive skills and preferences.     

Consumption and geographic mobility in pandemic times. Evidence from Mexico

We analyze the universe of point-of-sale (POS) transactions before and during the COVID-19 lockdown in Mexico. We find three key results. First, consumption in Mexico fell by 23 percent in the April-June quarter of 2020 and by 16 percent from April to September of 2020 as compared to expected levels. Second, reductions in consumption were highly heterogeneous across sectors and states, with states and activities related to tourism the most affected. Third, using variation over time and states, we estimate the elasticity of POS expenditures with respect to geographic mobility (measured using cellphone location data) to be slightly less than 1. This estimate suggests that spending in developing countries may be more responsive to mobility than in developed countries, and that mobility indicators could be used as a real-time proxy for consumption in some economies.