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An examination of paternal and maternal intergenerational transmission of schooling

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  • Chiara Pronzato

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. Previous research trying to control for unobserved heterogeneity has found conflicting results: in most cases, a strong positive paternal effect was found with a negligible maternal effect; in fewer cases, opposite results were found. In this paper, I make use of a sample of Norwegian twins to evaluate the impact on the robustness of the estimates when varying the sample size and when selecting different parts of the population. Results concerning the effect of mother’s education are very sensitive to the size of the sample, while the part of the educational distribution considered seems to be a key to reconciling previous results from the literature.
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  • Chiara Pronzato, 2012. "An examination of paternal and maternal intergenerational transmission of schooling," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 591-608, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:25:y:2012:i:2:p:591-608
    DOI: 10.1007/s00148-010-0311-2
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intergenerational transmission; Education; Twin-estimator; C23; I2;
    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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