Unveiling the Cosmic Race: Skin tone and intergenerational economic disparities in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This paper examines how skin tone shapes intergenerational economic disparities across 25 Latin American and Caribbean countries. First, it analyzes the distribution of ethnoracial identities and skin tone, confirming Mestizo predominance and revealing how broad categories obscure substantial phenotypic diversity. Second, it documents non-linear gaps in income and education, with darker skin tones consistently linked to economic disadvantages. A variance decomposition shows that skin tone explains significant within-group variation, offering explanatory power beyond self-reported ethnoracial categories. Finally, using mothers’ education as a benchmark, the study provides novel cross-country evidence on skin tone gaps in absolute educational intergenerational mobility, revealing barriers to upward mobility for darker-skinned individuals. Robustness checks with machine-assessed skin tone data from Mexico, incorporating additional parental and contextual controls, confirm these disparities. These findings underscore the need to account for phenotypic variation when studying economic inequality in Latin America.