Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35269 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3630
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Recent studies that aim to estimate the causal link between the education of parents and their children provide evidence that is far from conclusive. This paper explores why. There are a number of possible explanations. One is that these studies rely on different data sources, gathered in different countries at different times. Another one is that these studies use different identification strategies. Three identification strategies that are currently in use rely on: identical twins; adoptees; and instrumental variables. In this paper we apply each of these three strategies to one particular Swedish data set. The purpose is threefold: (i) explain the disparate evidence in the recent literature; (ii) learn more about the quality of each identification procedure; and (iii) get at better perspective about intergenerational effects of education. We find that the three identification strategies all produce intergenerational schooling estimates that are lower than the corresponding OLS estimates, indicating the importance of accounting for ability bias. But interestingly, when applying the three methods to the same data set, we are able to fully replicate the discrepancies across methods found in the previous literature. Our findings therefore indicate that the estimated impact of parental education on that of their child in Sweden does depend on identification, which suggests that country and cohort differences do not lie behind the observed disparities. Finally, we conclude that income is a mechanism linking parent's and children's schooling, that can partly explain the diverging results across methods.
Subjects: 
Intergenerational mobility
education
causation
selection
identification
JEL: 
I20
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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