Breaking the Cycle: the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital

Andrew Wheeler

No 2016-22, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: This paper examines the causal effect of parental education on the cognitive and non-cognitive development of children. I find that a parent's education is a strong determinant of their child's verbal aptitude, numerical aptitude and educational aspirations. Parents who complete high school rather than just primary school will on average lift their children's cognitive performance by 24 percentiles in maths, 15 percentiles in vocabulary and 23 percentiles in reading tests. Children of these parents will also aspire to complete two more years of schooling. Somewhat surprisingly, I find that parental education has no impact on children's self-esteem or self-efficacy. These results are robust to various specifications. I estimate these effects using instrumental variables, taking a change in education policy with differential effects on North Vietnam and South Vietnam as my instrument. The instruments used are relevant and strong, and there is sound cause to believe that they are valid. To my knowledge, this is the first study to derive a causal relationship between parental education and non-cognitive development. It also contributes to a sparse and unsettled literature on the causal relationship between parental education and cognitive development.

Keywords: Cognitive Development; Non-cognitive Development; Parental Education; Instrumental Variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 I26 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu and nep-neu
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