Grandchildren in Indonesia are escaping poverty much faster than children in the United States or Europe.
April 24, 2026
Original Paper
Educational Mobility Across Multiple Generations in Indonesia
arXiv · 2604.19969
The Takeaway
Multigenerational educational mobility in Indonesia is significantly higher than what standard parent-child statistics suggest. Most economic theories assume that the advantages of the wealthy compound over generations, making mobility harder in developing nations. The Indonesian data reveals a different dynamic where family influence fades more quickly, allowing for a more rapid reset of social status. This contradicts patterns seen in Western countries where the long shadow of a grandfather's success still helps a grandchild. This suggests that the rules of social class are not universal and may depend heavily on a country's specific economic stage.
From the abstract
Standard intergenerational measures have been shown to understate the long-run persistence of socioeconomic advantages in developed countries. We study theoretically and empirically whether this pattern extends to less developed settings, using Indonesia as a case study. Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and Census data, we study multigenerational correlations in education across three generations. Contrary to previous findings, we observe greater multigenerational mobility than par