The Effect of Education on the Relationship between Genetics, Early-Life Disadvantages, and Later-Life SES

Silvia Barcellos, Leandro Carvalho and Patrick Turley

No 28750, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper investigates whether education weakens the relationship between early-life disadvantages and later-life SES. We use three proxies for advantage that we show are independently associated with SES in middle-age. Besides early, favorable family and neighborhood conditions, we argue that the genes a child inherits also represent a source of advantages. Using a regression discontinuity design and data for over 110,000 individuals, we study a compulsory schooling reform in the UK that generated exogenous variation in schooling. While the reform succeeded in reducing educational disparities, it did not weaken the relationship between early-life disadvantages and wages. This implies that advantaged children had higher returns to schooling. We exploit family-based random genetic variation and find no evidence that these higher returns were driven by genetically-influenced individual characteristics such as innate ability or skills.

JEL-codes: I24 I26 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-eur
Note: AG CH ED LS PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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