Bangladesh makes significant progress in absolute IGM

Bangladesh has made significant progress in absolute intergenerational mobility (IGM), meaning the share of individuals exceeding their parents, in education with 65 per cent of girls being more educated than their fathers, said an economics professor teaching in a Canadian university, according to a statement.

However, relative IGM, meaning the extent an individual is economically independent of parents' position, is still low and even worse in case of girls, said Dr Sadequl Islam of Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

He was presenting a paper at a seminar on "Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility in Education and Income in Bangladesh and Selected Countries" organised by the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at Brac University (BracU) on June 19.

The paper compared Bangladesh's performance in absolute and relative mobility in education and income with countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China and Vietnam using mainly the Global Database on Intergenerational Mobility produced by World Bank.