Chapter 7 Changes Over Time in Parental Education and Inequality of Opportunities in Chile

Purpose – We attempt to incorporate the effect of changes in circumstances over time, which are usually approximated by parental education or occupation. We claim that the relative level of parental schooling is a better measure than the absolute level of education since parents' circumstances change dramatically in a society where schooling patterns change rapidly. Methodology – We control for parental cohorts of education for a given father's age. We also test the sensitivity of the results under the ex post and the ex ante approaches. Findings – We find that the cohort effect is generally negative. We also provide some insights into the differences between the ex ante and the ex post approaches and investigate the convergence of both methodologies as the number of tranches, tends toward one. Originality – Besides including parents' education changes over time, we illustrate that for Chile in 2009, the ex ante approach increases the level of inequality of opportunity compare to the ex post approach.