IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/10-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Explaining the socio-economic gradient in child outcomes: the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills

Author

Listed:
  • Claire Crawford

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Birmingham)

  • Alissa Goodman

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London)

  • Robert Joyce

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies)

Abstract

Papers in this volume and elsewhere consistently find a strong relationship between children's cognitive abilities and their parents' socio-economic position (SEP). Most studies seeking to explain the paths through which SEP affects cognitive skills suffer from a potentially serious omitted variables problem, as they are unable to account for an important determinant of children's cognitive abilities, namely parental cognitive ability. A range of econometric strategies have been employed to overcome this issue, but in this paper, we adopt the very simple (but rarely available) route of using data that includes a range of typically unobserved characteristics, such as parental cognitive ability and social skills. In line with previous work on the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills, we find that parental cognitive ability is a significant predictor of children's cognitive ability; moreover, it explains one sixth of the socio-economic gap in those skills, even after controlling for a rich set of demographic, attitudinal and behavioural factors. Despite the importance of parental cognitive ability in explaining children's cognitive ability, however, the addition of such typically unobserved characteristics does not alter our impression of the relative importance of other factors in explaining the socio-economic gap in cognitive skills. This is reassuring for studies that are unable to control for parental cognitive ability.

Suggested Citation

  • Claire Crawford & Alissa Goodman & Robert Joyce, 2010. "Explaining the socio-economic gradient in child outcomes: the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills," IFS Working Papers W10/16, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:10/16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp1016.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Björklund Anders & Hederos Eriksson Karin & Jäntti Markus, 2010. "IQ and Family Background: Are Associations Strong or Weak?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierre Lefebvre & Philip Merrigan, 2022. "Why Subsidize Independent Schools? Estimating the Effect of a Unique Canadian Schooling Model on Educational Attainment," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-22, February.
    2. Lindsey Macmillan & Claire Tyler & Anna Vignoles, 2013. "Who gets the Top Jobs? The role of family background and networks in recent graduates' access to high status professions," DoQSS Working Papers 13-15, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    3. Annemarie Ruijsbroek & Alet H Wijga & Ulrike Gehring & Marjan Kerkhof & Mariël Droomers, 2015. "School Performance: A Matter of Health or Socio-Economic Background? Findings from the PIAMA Birth Cohort Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-17, August.
    4. John Jerrim, 2012. "The Socio‐Economic Gradient in Teenagers' Reading Skills: How Does England Compare with Other Countries?," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 33(2), pages 159-184, June.
    5. Claire Tyler, 2016. "The role of non-cognitive and cognitive skills in accounting for the intergenerational transmission of 'top job' status," DoQSS Working Papers 16-03, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Calderón, María Cecilia & Hoddinott, John, 2011. "The Inter-Generational Transmission of Cognitive Abilities in Guatemala," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 3105, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Lundborg, Petter & Majlesi, Kaveh, 2018. "Intergenerational transmission of human capital: Is it a one-way street?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 206-220.
    3. John Ermisch & Chiara Pronzato, 2010. "Causal Effects of Parents’ Education on Children’s Education," CHILD Working Papers wp05_10, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
    4. Conti, Valentina & Kopinska, Joanna, 2018. "The role of parental cognitive ageing in the intergenerational mobility of cognitive abilities," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 38-47.
    5. Erik Grönqvist & Björn Öckert & Jonas Vlachos, 2017. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(4), pages 887-918.
    6. Elisabeth Bügelmayer & Daniel D. Schnitzlein, 2018. "Is it the family or the neighborhood? Evidence from sibling and neighbor correlations in youth education and health," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(3), pages 369-388, September.
    7. Björklund, Anders & Jäntti, Markus, 2012. "How important is family background for labor-economic outcomes?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 465-474.
    8. Daniel Erdsiek, 2016. "Overqualification of graduates: assessing the role of family background [Überqualifikation von Hochschulabsolventen: Welche Rolle spielt der familiäre Hintergrund?]," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 49(3), pages 253-268, November.
    9. Cheti Nicoletti & Birgitta Rabe, 2019. "Sibling spillover effects in school achievement," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(4), pages 482-501, June.
    10. Luna Bellani & Michela Bia, 2016. "Intergenerational poverty transmission in Europe: The role of education," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2016-02, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    11. Anger, Silke, 2011. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills During Adolescence and Young Adulthood," IZA Discussion Papers 5749, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Mussa, Richard, 2017. "Early-Life Rainfall Shocks and Intergenerational Education Mobility in Malawi," MPRA Paper 75978, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Anger, Silke & Schnitzlein, Daniel D., 2013. "Like Brother, Like Sister? The Importance of Family Background for Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 80052, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Jacobs, Babs & van der Velden, Rolf, 2021. "Exploring the uncharted waters of educational mobility: The role of key skills," ROA Research Memorandum 006, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    15. Karin Hederos & Markus Jäntti & Lena Lindahl, 2017. "Gender and inequality of opportunity in Sweden," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 605-635, December.
    16. Silke Anger & Guido Heineck, 2010. "Do smart parents raise smart children? The intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 1105-1132, June.
    17. Jiaming Soh & Kegon T. K. Tan, 2020. "The Nurture Effects of Multidimensional Parental Skills on College Attainment," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 1-42.
    18. Hellström, Jörgen & Lapanan, Nicha & Olsson, Rickard, 2020. "Socially responsible investments among parents and adult children," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    19. Black, Sandra E. & Devereux, Paul J., 2011. "Recent Developments in Intergenerational Mobility," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 16, pages 1487-1541, Elsevier.
    20. Lars Lefgren & Matthew J. Lindquist & David Sims, 2012. "Rich Dad, Smart Dad: Decomposing the Intergenerational Transmission of Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 268-303.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:10/16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.