Parental Education and Offspring Outcomes: Evidence from the Swedish Compulsory Schooling Reform

Petter Lundborg, Anton Nilsson and Dan-Olof Rooth

No 6570, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we exploit the Swedish compulsory schooling reform in order to estimate the causal effect of parental education on son's outcomes. We use data from the Swedish enlistment register on the entire population of males and focus on outcomes such as cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and various dimensions of health at the age of 18. We find significant and positive effects of maternal education on sons' skills and health status. Although the reform had equally strong effects on father's education as on mother's education, we find little evidence that paternal education improves son's outcomes.

Keywords: health; non-cognitive skills; cognitive skills; education; schooling reforms; causality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I28 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2014, 6 (1), 253-278

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Working Paper: Parental education and offspring outcomes: evidence from the Swedish compulsory schooling reform (2012)
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