The impact of parental income and education on the schooling of their children

By A. Chevalier, Colm Harmon, Vincent O’ Sullivan, I. Walker. Social Science Research Network, 2005

383 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the relationship between early school-leaving and parental education and paternal income using UK Labour Force Survey data. OLS estimation reveals modest effects of income, stronger effects of maternal education relative to paternal, and stronger effects on sons than daughters. Using IV to simultaneously model the endogeneity of parental education and income, the maternal education effect disappears, while paternal education remains significant but only for daughters. In our favourite specification, which proxy for permanent income, paternal income becomes insignificant. Thus policies alleviating income constraints to alter schooling decisions may not be as effective as policies which increase permanent income.JEL codesI20; J62

Subfields: Education, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d21fb7cb6df20f4b01d132e40b2b61bbe8da4607

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. P. Devereux
2. Sandra E. Black
3. A. Vignoles
4. C. Meghir
5. M. Parey
6. Stephen Machin
7. Pedro Carneiro
8. Graham Hobbs

In Gender Studies

1. P. Devereux
2. Pedro Carneiro
3. Sandra E. Black
4. O. Marie
5. C. Meghir
6. Stephen Machin
7. M. Parey
8. O. Attanasio

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Sandra E. Black
2. P. Devereux
3. A. Vignoles
4. Stephen Machin
5. C. Meghir
6. O. Marie
7. M. Parey
8. Pedro Carneiro

Citations in the corpus

• Recent Developments in Intergenerational Mobility (2010, methodology): “55 Work by Chevalier et al. (2005) combines the instrument for parental education used in Chevalier (2003) and union status of the father as an instrument for father’s income (as used in Shea (2000)) and concludes that income matters more than education for children’s outcomes.”
• The Crime Reducing Effect of Education (2010, background): “Galindo-Rueda (2003), Chevalier (2004), and Chevalier et al. (2005) look at the effect of parental income on education of their children.”
• Is children’s free school meal ‘eligibility’ a good proxy for family income? (2010, background): “Family income is an important factor associated with children’s educational achievement (Ermisch & Francesconi, 2001; Blanden & Gregg, 2004; Chevalier et al., 2005).”
• Maternal Education, Home Environments and the Development of Children and Adolescents (2007, background): “Chevalier, Harmon, O’Sullivan, and Walker (2010) study compulsory schooling laws in the UK, but emphasize the relative effect of parental education and income.”