Educational Attainment and Family Background

Arild Aakvik, Kjell G Salvanes and Kjell Vaage

German Economic Review, 2005, vol. 6, issue 3, 377-394

Abstract: Abstract. This paper analyses the effect of aspects of family background, such as family income and parental education, on the educational attainment of persons born from 1967 to 1972. Family income is measured at different periods of a child's life to separate long‐term versus short‐term effects of family income on educational choices. We find that permanent income matters to a certain degree, and that family income when the child is 0–6 years old is an important explanatory variable for educational attainment later in a child's life. We find that short‐term credit constraints have only a small effect on educational attainment. Long‐term factors, such as permanent family income and parental education, are much more important for educational attainment than are short‐term credit constraints. Public interventions to alleviate the effects of family background should thus also be targeted at a child's early years, the shaping period for the cognitive and non‐cognitive skills important later in life.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2005.00138.x

Related works:
Journal Article: Educational Attainment and Family Background (2005)
Working Paper: Educational Attainment and Family Background (2005)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:germec:v:6:y:2005:i:3:p:377-394

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1465-6485

Access Statistics for this article

German Economic Review is currently edited by Bernhard Felderer, Joseph F. Francois, Ivo Welch, Urs Schweizer and David E. Wildasin

More articles in German Economic Review from Verein für Socialpolitik Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().