This paper examines whether Ghana’s education reforms have increased intergenerational education mobility. Using the newly constructed Ghana Education and Labour Series—a harmonized dataset combining multiple rounds of the Ghana Living Standards Survey—we track intergenerational education mobility trends for cohorts born between 1958 and 1992. Utilizing bottom-half mobility, a measure of the expected educational rank of children born to fathers in the bottom half of the education distribution, we find that, despite substantial gains in educational attainment across cohorts, mobility has remained largely unchanged. We estimate causal effects of the 1996 Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education policy using regional and cohort variation in exposure. The reform substantially increased years of schooling, particularly for women and those born in northern regions, but had only a modest effect on intergenerational mobility. These findings suggest that while free and compulsory education expanded access, structural inequalities continue to limit equal opportunities.
