Like mother like son? Experimental evidence on the transmission of values from parents to children

Marco Cipriani, Paola Giuliano and Olivier Jeanne

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2013, vol. 90, issue C, 100-111

Abstract: This paper studies whether prosocial values are transmitted from parents to their children. We do so through an economic experiment in which children and their parents play a standard public goods game. The experimental data presents us with a surprising result. While we find significant heterogeneity in cooperative preferences in both parents and children, we cannot reject the null that the correlation between the degree of cooperation of a child and that of his or her parent is zero. That is, there is lack of evidence in our data that prosocial values are transmitted from parents to children. This finding is robust to the inclusion of demographic and socio-economic controls. Finally, parents show a significant degree of conditional cooperation, thus confirming the results of the existing experimental literature; such conditional cooperation is however absent in children.

Keywords: Cultural economics; Experimental economics; Cultural transmission; Economic values; Public goods game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 H41 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Like Mother Like Son? Experimental Evidence on the Transmission of Values from Parents to Children (2007)
Working Paper: Like Mother Like Son? Experimental Evidence on the Transmission of Values from Parents to Children (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:90:y:2013:i:c:p:100-111

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2013.03.002

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