Post‐socialist transition and intergenerational educational mobility in Kyrgyzstan

We investigate long‐term trends in intergenerational educational mobility in a lower middle‐income transition economy. We draw on evidence from Kyrgyzstan using data from three household surveys collected in 1993, 1998 and 2011. We find that Kyrgyzstan, like Eastern European middle‐income transition economies, maintained high educational mobility, comparable to levels during the Soviet era. However, we find that the younger cohorts, exposed to the transition during their school years, experienced a rapid decline in educational mobility. We also document that gender differences in schooling and educational mobility, found among older‐aged individuals, disappeared in the younger cohorts.