The Influence of Parental and Grandparental Education in the Transmission of Human Capital

A. Héctor Moreno

No 588, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: This paper examines the influence of parental and grandparental education in the transmission of human capital. A natural experimental set-up, from a regional conflict that occurred in 1926 is exploited to instrument years of schooling of the grandparents' generation whereas local labour market indicators at adolescence serve as an instrument for the education of the parents' generation. Using a nationally representative Mexican survey that gathers detailed information on three generations, the paper shows that accounting for endogeneity reveals significantly more inter-generational mobility rather than ignoring it. The paper also documents greater persistence of family background in the older pair of parent-child links, i.e. grandparent-parent, than in the younger pair, i.e. parent-grandchildren. Results show that the direct influence of parental education on the grandchildren's education is so dominant that the impact of grand-parental education fades away once accounting for parental education.

Keywords: multigenerational; mobility; education; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-isf and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2021-588.pdf First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2021-588

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