7/28/2019 Mobility Through Education

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MOBILITY THROUGH EDUCATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF MECHANISMS

FOR DEFERRED GRATIFICATION

In modern society, young people must demonstrate a growing capacity for deferring gratification if they hope to

efficiently exploit the existing channels of mobility. This is due to the fact that the thresholds for access to the

necessary resources for achieving good occupational positions have risen sharply. The clearest example of this

phenomenon is the education system. A recent studies shows that in Montevideo the minimum education level at

which the majority of 20- to 30-year-old workers receive sufficient wages for maintaining a small family (a spouse

and small child) above the poverty line is 17 years of schooling. (Similar measures for Montevideo in 1981 set the

level at nine years of schooling, or the equivalent of finishing the basic secondary cycle.) Keeping a student in the

education system for such a long period poses new problems for the social institutions associated with young people;

the complexity of these problems varies according to the speed of educational expansion. Financially, the problem

involves not only covering the students daily consumer expenses for a longer period and paying the expenses

derived from increasing educational costs, but also compensating somehow for lost income in many cases. The

nonfinancial requirements include the continuity and strength which these families must exhibit in order to transmit

values and sustain motivation. Keep in mind that for adolescents to develop the capacity to defer the gratification of

their immediate needs until after long-range educational goals have been achieved, they and their parents must all be

convinced that the current sacrifices will be adequately compensated by future achievements. Source: Montevideo,United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/ ECLAC Office in

Montevideo, May, 1999.Another element worth considering is the greater degree of institutional and political articulation

seen among the adult generations in comparison with the younger generations. In an environment ofgrowing job insecurity, those segments of the population that act corporatively tend to close ranks aroundthe defense of their achievements and in particular of their market positions. Such actions generate

constraints that not only hinder the full utilization of the youth populations human resources but alsoprevent a higher State investment in developing their skills, with adverse effects for intergenerational

equity. Although the problems of intergenerational equity have not been widely investigated in thecountries of the region, they become evident on comparing the relative weight of the poor in the differentage groups and the distribution of public social spending (especially with respect to the share of social

security and education).