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Human Capital Spillovers in Families: Do Parents Learn from or Lean on Their Children?

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  • Ilyana Kuziemko

Abstract

I model how children's acquisition of a given form of human capital incentivizes adults in their household to either learn from them (if children can teach the skill to adults, adults' cost of learning falls) or lean on them (if children's human capital substitutes for that of adults in household production, adults' benefit from learning falls). Using variation in compliance with an English-immersion mandate in California schools, I find that English instruction improved immigrant children's English proficiency but discouraged adults living with them from acquiring the language. Whether family members "learn" or "lean" affects the externalities associated with education policies.

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  • Ilyana Kuziemko, 2014. "Human Capital Spillovers in Families: Do Parents Learn from or Lean on Their Children?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(4), pages 755-786.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/677231
    DOI: 10.1086/677231
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    3. 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.
    4. Esther Arenas-Arroyo & Bernhard Schmidpeter, 2022. "Spillover Effects of Immigration Policies on Children's Human Capital," Economics working papers 2022-13, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    5. De Neve, Jan-Walter & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2017. "Spillovers between siblings and from offspring to parents are understudied: A review and future directions for research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 56-61.
    6. Javier Ortega & Gregory Verdugo, 2015. "Assimilation in multilingual cities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 785-815, July.
    7. Aimee Chin, 2015. "Impact of bilingual education on student achievement," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 131-131, March.
    8. De Neve, Jan-Walter & Fink, Günther, 2018. "Children’s education and parental old age survival – Quasi-experimental evidence on the intergenerational effects of human capital investment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 76-89.
    9. Ludovica Gambaro & Guido Neidhöfer & C. Katharina Spieß, 2019. "The Effect of Early Childhood Education and Care Services on the Social Integration of Refugee Families," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1828, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Caminal, Ramon & Cappellari, Lorenzo & Di Paolo, Antonio, 2018. "Linguistic Skills and the Intergenerational Transmission of Language," IZA Discussion Papers 11793, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Rodrigo Belo & Pedro Ferreira & Rahul Telang, 2016. "Spillovers from Wiring Schools with Broadband: The Critical Role of Children," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3450-3471, December.
    12. Everding, Jakob, 2019. "Heterogeneous spillover effects of children's education on parental mental health," hche Research Papers 18, University of Hamburg, Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche).
    13. Lenis Saweda O. Liverpool‐Tasie & Ahmed Salim Nuhu & Titus Awokuse & Thomas Jayne & Milu Muyanga & Adebayo Aromolaran & Adesoji Adelaja, 2023. "Can medium‐scale farms support smallholder commercialisation and improve welfare? Evidence from Nigeria," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 48-74, February.
    14. Caminal, Ramon & Cappellari, Lorenzo & Di Paolo, A., 2021. "Language-in-education, language skills and the intergenerational transmission of language in a bilingual society," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    15. Daniela Marconi & Marco Marinucci & Giovanna Paladino, 2022. "Digitalization, financial knowledge and financial decisions," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 741, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    16. Cornelissen, Thomas & Dang, Thang, 2022. "The multigenerational impacts of educational expansion: Evidence from Vietnam," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    17. Javier Ortega & Gregory Verdugo, 2015. "Assimilation in multilingual cities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 785-815, July.
    18. Yiqun Chen & Petra Persson & Maria Polyakova, 2019. "The Roots of Health Inequality and The Value of Intra-Family Expertise," NBER Working Papers 25618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Youlu Zhang & Li Zhang & Fulian Li & Liqian Deng & Jiaoli Cai & Linyue Yu, 2022. "Offspring Education and Parents’ Health Inequality in China: Evidence from Spillovers of Education Reform," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-26, February.
    20. Edberg, Dana & Mukhopadhyay, Sankar & Wendel, Jeanne, 2019. "Incentive design to boost health for juveniles with Medicaid coverage: Evidence from a field experiment," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 101-115.
    21. Gambaro, Ludovica & Neidhöfer, Guido & Spiess, C. Katharina, 2021. "The effect of early childhood education and care services on the integration of refugee families," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).

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