Parental background, secondary school track choice, and wages

Christian Dustmann

Oxford Economic Papers, 2004, vol. 56, issue 2, 209-230

Abstract: The way parents take influence on the education of their children is a crucial aspect of intergenerational mobility. Unlike in the UK or in the US, in Germany an important decision about which educational track to follow is made at a relatively early stage: after primary school, at the age of ten. In this paper, we use micro data to analyse the association between parents' education and profession, and secondary track school choice and subsequent career prospects of the child. Our analysis covers the last six decades. We demonstrate that parental background is strongly related to the secondary track choice of the child, and subsequent educational achievements. We find a slight convergence for individuals from different parental background over the last decades. We also find a positive trend for females to follow higher secondary school tracks, keeping parental background constant. The association between parental class and educational choice translates into substantial earnings differentials later in life. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (307)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpf048 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:oxecpp:v:56:y:2004:i:2:p:209-230

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().