Parental Education, Grade Attainment and Earnings Expectations among University Students

Liam Delaney, Colm Harmon and Cathy Redmond ()
Additional contact information
Cathy Redmond: University College London
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Cathy Balfe

No 5646, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: While there is an extensive literature on intergenerational transmission of economic outcomes (education, health and income for example), many of the pathways through which these outcomes are transmitted are not as well understood. We address this deficit by analysing the relationship between socio-economic status and child outcomes in university, based on a rich and unique dataset of university students. While large socio-economic differences in academic performance exist at the point of entry into university, these differences are substantially narrowed during the period of study. Importantly, the differences across socio-economic backgrounds in university grade attainment for female students is explained by intermediating variables such as personality, risk attitudes and time preferences, and subject/college choices. However, for male students, we explain less than half of the socio-economic gradient through these same pathways. Despite the weakening socio-economic effect in grade attainment, a key finding is that large socio-economic differentials in the earnings expectations of university students persist, even when controlling for grades in addition to our rich set of controls. Our findings pose a sizable challenge for policy in this area as they suggest that equalising educational outcomes may not translate into equal labour market outcomes.

Keywords: inequality; education; socio-economic status; discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 I21 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published - published in: Economics of Education Review, 2011, 30 (6), 1136-1152

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5646.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Parental education, grade attainment and earnings expectations among university students (2011)
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:dp5646

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 ().