Causal effects of parents’ education on children’s education

Abstract

The paper shows that parents’ education is an important, but hardly exclusive part of the common family background that generates positive correlation between siblings’ educational attainments. Our estimates based on Norwegian twins indicate that an additional year of either mother’s or father’s education increases their children’s education by as little as one-tenth of a year. There is evidence that father’s education has a larger effect than that of mothers: one explanation is that better educated mothers work more in paid employment and spend less time interacting with their children. We test this hypothesis and find no evidence to support it.