Intergenerational Persistence in the Effects of Compulsory Schooling in the U.S

Titus Galama, Andrei Munteanu (munteanu.andrei@uqam.ca) and Kevin Thom

Cahiers de recherche / Working Papers from Chaire de recherche sur les enjeux économiques intergénérationnels / Research Chair in Intergenerational Economics

Abstract: Using linked records from the 1880 to 1940 full-count United States decennial censuses, the authors estimate the effects of parental exposure to compulsory schooling (CS) laws on the human capital outcomes of children, exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. CS reforms not only increased the educational attainment of exposed individuals, but also that of their children. The authors find that one extra year of maternal (paternal) exposure to CS increased children’s educational attainment by 0.015 (0.016) years – larger than the average effects on the parents themselves, and larger than the few existing intergenerational estimates from studies of more recent reforms. They find particularly large effects on black families and first-born sons. Exploring mechanisms, the authors find suggestive evidence that higher parental exposure to CS affected children’s outcomes through higher own human capital, marriage to more educated spouses, and a higher propensity to reside in neighborhoods with greater school resources (teacher-to-student ratios) and with higher average educational attainment.

Keywords: education; inequalities; compulsoryschooling; humancapital; intergenerational transmission; geographic sorting; assortativemating; racial inequalities. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 H52 I24 I25 I26 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://creei.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cahier ... ory_schooling_us.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Intergenerational Persistence in the Effects of Compulsory Schooling in the U.S (2024)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Persistence in the Effects of Compulsory Schooling in the US (2024)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Persistence in the Effects of Compulsory Schooling in the US (2024)
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:rsi:creeic:2402

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers de recherche / Working Papers from Chaire de recherche sur les enjeux économiques intergénérationnels / Research Chair in Intergenerational Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lee Boyle (lee.boyle@hec.ca).