Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/250463 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14802
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We propose a model of intergenerational transmission of education wherein children belong to either highly educated or low-educated families. Children choose the intensity of their social activities while parents decide how much educational effort to exert. Using data on adolescents in the United States, we structurally estimate this model and find that, on average, children's homophily acts as a complement to the educational effort of highly educated parents but as a substitute for the educational effort of low-educated parents. We also perform some counterfactual policy simulations. We find that policies that subsidize kids' socialization efforts can backfire for low-educated students because they tend to increase their interactions with other low-educated students (i.e., homophily), which reduces the education effort of their parents and, thus, their chance of becoming educated. On the contrary, policies that increase heterophily by favoring friendship links between kids from different education backgrounds can be effective in reducing the education gap between them.
Subjects: 
social networks
education
homophily
cultural transmission
JEL: 
D85
I21
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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