Socio-Economic Status and Inequalities in Children's IQ and Economic Preferences

Thomas Deckers, Armin Falk, Fabian Kosse, Pia Pinger and Hannah Schildberg-Horisch
Additional contact information
Thomas Deckers: University of Bonn
Hannah Schildberg-Horisch: University of Bonn

No 2017-088, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper explores inequalities in IQ and economic preferences between children from high and low socio-economic status (SES) families. We document that children from high SES families are more intelligent, patient and altruistic, as well as less risk-seeking. To understand the underlying causes and mechanisms, we propose a framework of how parental investments as well as maternal IQ and economic preferences influence a child's IQ and preferences. Within this framework, we allow SES to influence both the level of parental time and parenting style investments, as well as the productivity of the investment process. Our results indicate that disparities in the level of parental investments hold substantial importance for SES gaps in economic preferences and, to a lesser extent, IQ. In light of the importance of IQ and preferences for behaviors and outcomes, our findings offer an explanation for social immobility.

Keywords: socioeconomic status; time preference; risk preferences; altruism; experiments with children; origins of preferences; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D64 D81 D90 J13 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-gth and nep-mic
Note: IP
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Decker ... q-IQ-preferences.pdf First version, September, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Socio-Economic Status and Inequalities in Children's IQ and Economic Preferences (2019)
Working Paper: Socio-Economic Status and Inequalities in Children\'s IQ and Economic Preferences (2019)
Working Paper: Socio-Economic Status and Inequalities in Children's IQ and Economic Preferences (2017)
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:hka:wpaper:2017-088

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().