Do Parental Networks Pay Off? Linking Children's Labor-Market Outcomes to their Parents' Friends

Erik Plug (), Bas van der Klaauw and Lennart Ziegler ()
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Lennart Ziegler: University of Vienna

No 9074, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines whether children are better off if their parents have stronger social networks. Using data on high-school friendships of parents, we analyze whether the number and characteristics of friends affect the labor-market outcomes of children. While parental friendships formed in high school appear long lasting, we find no significant impact on their children's occupational choices and earnings prospects. These results do not change when we account for network endogeneity, network persistency and network measurement error. Only when children enter the labor market, we find that friends of parents have a marginally significant but small influence on the occupational choice of children.

Keywords: occupational choice; informal job search; intergenerational effects; social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 J24 J46 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-ltv, nep-net, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Forthcoming - published in: Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2108, 120 (1), 268-295

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Related works:
Journal Article: Do Parental Networks Pay Off? Linking Children's Labor‐Market Outcomes to Their Parents' Friends (2018)
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