Like Father, Like Son? A Note on the Intergenerational Transmission of IQ Scores

Sandra E. Black (), Paul J. Devereux () and Kjell G Salvanes ()

No 14274, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: More able parents tend to have more able children. While few would question the validity of this statement, there is little large-scale evidence on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores. Using a larger and more comprehensive dataset than previous work, we are able to estimate the intergenerational correlation in IQ scores, examining not just average correlations but also how this relationship varies for different subpopulations. We find that there is substantial intergenerational transmission of IQ scores; an increase in father's IQ at age 18 of 10% is associated with a 3.2% increase in son's IQ at the same age. This relationship holds true no matter how we break the data. This effect is much larger than our estimated elasticity of intergenerational transmission of income of approximately .2.

JEL-codes: I0 J0 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-08
Note: CH ED LS
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14274.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Like Father, Like Son? A Note on the Intergenerational Transmission of IQ Scores (2008)
Journal Article: Like father, like son? A note on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14274

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14274
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().