Schooling, Family Background, and Adoption: Is it Nature or is it Nurture?

Erik Plug () and Wim Vijverberg

No 247, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: When parents are more educated, their children tend to receive more schooling as well. Does this occur because parental ability is passed on genetically or because more educated parents provide a better environment for children to flourish? Using an intergenerational sample of families, we estimate on the basis of a comparison of biological and adopted children that at most 65 percent of the parental ability is genetically transmitted.

Keywords: adoption; Intergenerational mobility; genetic transfers; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2001-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - published in: Journal of Political Economy, 2003, 111 (3), 611-641

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp247.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Schooling, Family Background, and Adoption: Is It Nature or Is It Nurture? (2003)
Working Paper: Schooling, Family Background, and Adoption: Is It Nature of Is It Nurture? (2000)
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:iza:izadps:dp247

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().