Do Parents Risk Aversion and Wealth Explalin Secondary School Choice?

Marco Leonardi

Giornale degli Economisti, 2007, vol. 66, issue 2, 177-206

Abstract: Using data in which individual risk aversion is measured from answers to a lottery question, I investigate if (and to what extent) parents’ risk aversion and wealth can explain secondary schooling choices of young Italians. The question is relevant because the type of secondary school is likely to affect accession to college and the future performance in the labor market. I find that risk aversion has no effect on the choice of secondary school while family wealth is significantly positively associated to the choice of “Liceo”. OLS and IV estimates show that parents’ wealth has a significantly larger effect in liquidity constrained families (4% of the sample). This finding points to the necessity of introducing schooling grants at lower levels of schooling.

Keywords: risk aversion; education; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://ftp.gde.unibocconi.it/gde_articles/2007/GDE_V66_N2_P177-206.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:gde:journl:gde_v66_n2_p177-206

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.gde.unibocconi.it

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Giornale degli Economisti from GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University via Sarfatti, 25 - 20136 Milano (Italy).
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Erika Somma ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).