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The causal effect of parents’ schooling on children’s schooling in Europe. A new IV approach

Author

Listed:
  • Enkelejda Havari

    (University of Venice - Ca’ Foscari)

  • Marco Savegnago

    (Bank of Italy and University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

Abstract

This paper estimates the causal effect of parental education on children’s education in 13 European countries, using representative data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). A novel instrumental variable approach is used to solve the endogeneity issue. We combine two instruments: parental birth order (indicator for being a first born) and Compulsory Schooling Laws (CSL). While CSL have been widely used in applied work, our contribution is to introduce parental birth order as instrument in the intergenerational mobility literature. We find that parental education has a positive, large and significant causal effect on children’s education. This finding is robust to the instrument chosen (birth order, CSL, or both), to sample selection and to several robustness checks.

Suggested Citation

  • Enkelejda Havari & Marco Savegnago, 2014. "The causal effect of parents’ schooling on children’s schooling in Europe. A new IV approach," CEIS Research Paper 315, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 12 May 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:315
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Deole, Sumit S. & Zeydanli, Tugba, 2021. "Does education predict gender role attitudes?: Evidence from European datasets," GLO Discussion Paper Series 793, Global Labor Organization (GLO).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergenerational transmission; causality; birth order; education; Europe;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

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