Educational Mobility Promotes Innovation
ResearchZEW Study in Nature on the Link Between Equal Opportunities and Economic Dynamism
Higher educational mobility is associated with greater innovative capacity. European regions in which educational success depended less strongly on family background recorded a significant increase in patent applications. This is shown by a new study by Sarah McNamara, Guido Neidhöfer (both ZEW Mannheim) and Patrick Lehnert (University of Zurich), which was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. The findings demonstrate, for the first time on a large scale and over time, that better opportunities for social mobility are a key driver of innovation and economic development.
“Our findings show that it is not only the average level of education that matters, but above all how fairly educational opportunities are distributed. When people have access to high-quality education regardless of their background, talents are used more effectively and thus contribute significantly to social and technological progress,” explains Guido Neidhöfer, researcher in ZEW’s “Labour Markets and Social Insurance” Research Unit and DAAD Professor of Economics at the Turkish-German University in Istanbul. “Contrary to some assumptions, greater equality of opportunity therefore does not lead to a conflict of objectives between efficiency and equity but rather boosts overall economic performance.”
Equal Opportunities Foster Greater Talents
Sarah McNamara, a researcher in the same Research Unit, explains the reason: “A better allocation of human capital is crucial for innovation. When individual abilities play a stronger role in determining educational and career paths than characteristics of origin, innovation performance increases measurably. Greater educational mobility within a cohort, once it reaches working age, is associated with an average increase of around eleven per cent in patent applications.”
“Great-Gatsby-Map” Shows Regional Differences
The study also documents significant regional differences within Europe. Regions with low educational mobility are also characterised by high educational inequality – a pattern known in the context of income as the “Great-Gatsby-Curve”. The study presents this pattern for the first time in the form of a “Great-Gatsby-Map” for Europe. Educational mobility is particularly low in Southern and Eastern Europe, while Northern and Central Europe tend to show lower inequality both within and between generations. At the same time, however, there are also clear regional differences within individual countries.
The study further shows that the relationship between mobility and innovation is not equally strong everywhere. “Regions with low mobility benefit particularly from improvements. This underlines the importance of targeted economic policy measures to promote equal opportunities in education,” says Patrick Lehnert, Assistant Professor for Personnel Economics at the University of Zurich and Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Data Foundation
The study is based on the newly developed “EUROPE-IGM-ATLAS” dataset, which uses an original methodology to provide, for the first time, annual indicators of intergenerational educational mobility for European regions from 1985 to 2025. It is based on harmonised microdata from the European Social Survey, as well as age-specific profiles of labour market and innovation participation. These data were additionally linked with regional patent data from the European Patent Office.
