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IQ and Family Background: Are Associations Strong or Weak?

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Author Info
Björklund, Anders () (SOFI, Stockholm University)
Hederos Eriksson, Karin () (SOFI, Stockholm University)
Jäntti, Markus () (Abo Academy of Finland)

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Abstract

For the purpose of understanding the underlying mechanisms behind intergenerational associations in income and education, recent studies have explored the intergenerational transmission of abilities. We use a large representative sample of Swedish men to examine both intergenerational and sibling correlations in IQ. Since siblings share both parental factors and neighbourhood influences, the sibling correlation is a broader measure of the importance of family background than the intergenerational correlation. We use IQ data from the Swedish military enlistment tests. The correlation in IQ between fathers (born 1951-1956) and sons (born 1966-1980) is estimated to 0.347. The corresponding estimate for brothers (born 1951-1968) is 0.473, suggesting that family background explains approximately 50% of a person's IQ. Estimating sibling correlations in IQ we thus find that family background has a substantially larger impact on IQ than has been indicated by previous studies examining only intergenerational correlations in IQ.

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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 4305.

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Length: 12 pages
Date of creation: Jul 2009
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Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4305

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Related research
Keywords: ability; intergenerational mobility; family background;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General
I0 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General
J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Black, Sandra E. & Devereux, Paul J. & Salvanes, Kjell G., 2009. "Like father, like son? A note on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 138-140, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 2002. "The Inheritance of Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 3-30, Summer. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Solon, Gary, 1999. "Intergenerational mobility in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 29, pages 1761-1800 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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