Does Having Low Family Income During Childhood Affect Which Type of Secondary School You Go To? Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

Abstract

We examine the impact of family income during childhood on the type of secondary school that German children attend at age 14 Πa good indicator of lifetime socioeconomic attainment. We also consider the relevance of the timing of low income spells during childhood, and potential non-linearities in the income effect. We find that income effects are substantively small, once other important background factors are controlled for, that early childhood income is more important than contemporaneous income, and that there are non-linear effects. Our results shed light on how far existing evidence, which mainly refers to the USA, is generalisable to other countries and socioeconomic structures.