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Why Educated Mothers don't make Educated Children? A Statistical Study in the Intergenerational Transmission of Schooling

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Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Chiara Pronzato, 2008. "Why Educated Mothers don't make Educated Children? A Statistical Study in the Intergenerational Transmission of Schooling," Discussion Papers 563, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssb:dispap:563
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    1. Jere R. Behrman & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2005. "Does Increasing Women's Schooling Raise the Schooling of the Next Generation? Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1745-1751, December.
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    14. David Neumark, 1994. "Biases in Twin Estimates of the Return to Schooling: A Note on Recent Research," NBER Technical Working Papers 0158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    Cited by:

    1. Luciano Canova & Alessandro Vaglio, 2011. "Why do educated mothers matter? A model of parental help," Working Papers 2011/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    2. Canova, Luciano & Vaglio, Alessandro, 2010. "Why do educated mothers matter? A model of parental help," Economics Discussion Papers 2010-29, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Luciano Canova & Alessandro Vaglio, 2010. "Why do educated mothers matter? A model of parental help," Working Papers XREAP2010-17, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2010.
    4. Leão Fernandes, Graça & Chagas Lopes, Margarida, 2008. "ISEG Undergraduate Students: Determinants of Academic Performance," MPRA Paper 22082, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergenerational transmission; education; twin-estimator; sibling-estimator; power of the test;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

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