Discussion Papers no. 563

A statistical study in the intergenerational transmission of schooling

Why educated mothers don't make educated children?

More educated parents are observed to have better educated children. From a policy point of view, however, it is important to distinguish between causation and selection. Researchers trying to control for unobserved ability have found conflicting results: in most cases, they have found a strong positive paternal effect but a negligible maternal effect. In this paper, I evaluate the impact on the robustness of the estimates of the characteristics of the samples commonly used in this strand of research: samples of small size, with low variability in parental education, not randomly selected from the population. The part of the educational distribution involved in any identification strategy seems to be a key aspect to take into account to reconcile previous results from the literature.

Om publikasjonen

Tittel

Why educated mothers don't make educated children?. A statistical study in the intergenerational transmission of schooling

Ansvarlig

Chiara Pronzato

Serie og -nummer

Discussion Papers no. 563

Utgiver

Statistics Norway

Emne

Discussion Papers

Antall sider

24

Målform

Engelsk

Om Discussion Papers

Discussion papers comprise research papers intended for international journals and books. A preprint of a Discussion Paper may be longer and more elaborate than a standard journal article as it may include intermediate calculations, background material etc.

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