 Why do parents socialize their children to behave pro-socially? An information-based theoryFabrizio Adriani and Silvia Sonderegger Journal of Public Economics, 2009, vol. 93, issue 11-12, 1119-1124 Abstract: We present a model of intergenerational transmission of pro-social values in which parents have information about relevant characteristics of society that is not directly available to their children. Differently from existing models of cultural transmission of values (such as [Bisin and Verdier, 2001] and [Tabellini, 2008]) we assume that parents are exclusively concerned with their children's material welfare. If parents coordinate their educational choices, a child would look at her system of values to predict the values of her contemporaries, with whom she may interact. A parent may thus choose to instill pro-social values into his child in order to signal to her that others can generally be trusted. This implies that parents may optimally decide to endow their children with values that stand in contrast with maximization of material welfare, even if their children's material welfare is all they care about. Keywords: Intergenerational; transmission; Signaling; Values (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:93:y:2009:i:11-12:p:1119-1124 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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