Upward Mobility in Developing Countries

This article provides an overview of the literature on mobility in developing countries. Explicit distinctions are drawn between directional and non-directional measures, absolute and relative measures, and combinations thereof. We note that the scarcity of panel data has hindered the measurement of mobility for many countries. We pay particular attention to the recent development of panel-free mobility measures, which allows us to measure upward mobility in 122 countries. Throughout this review, we discuss some central themes in the literature.