Research Network on Intergenerational Mobility

We examine how land ownership shapes educational mobility in rural India. Using full-count rural census microdata, we document a robust step-function pattern across the land distribution: educational mobility rises sharply from the landless to marginal landholders and then plateaus. Exploiting historical variation in British-era land-tenure regimes, we demonstrate a causal link between higher landlessness and lower educational mobility. To unpack mechanisms, we develop a model where parents allocate children’s time between school and work under a subsistence constraint. With little or no land, the constraint binds, increasing child labour and suppressing schooling; a small rise in land relaxes it, producing a sharp drop in child labour and a jump in schooling and upward mobility. The framework endogenously generates the step-function, matches the core facts, rationalizes heterogeneities, and yields testable predictions that we validate.